at it."

Elsa, who was steering the boat, rose and found the wine and a horn mug,
which she filled and handed first to Foy.

"Here's a health," said Foy as he drank, "to the memory of Mother
Martha, who saved us all. Well, she died as she would have wished to
die, taking a Spaniard for company, and her story will live on."

"Amen," said Martin. Then a thought struck him, and, leaving his oars
for a minute, for he rowed two as against Foy's and Adrian's one, he
went forward to where Ramiro lay stricken senseless on the kegs of
specie and jewels in the bows, and took from him the great sword
Silence. But he strapped the Spaniard's legs together with his belt.

"That crack on the head keeps him quiet enough," he said in explanation,
"but he might come to and give trouble, or try to swim for it, since
such cats have many lives. Ah! Senor Ramiro, I told you I would have my
sword back before I was half an hour older, or go where I shouldn't want
one." Then he touched the spring in the hilt and examined the cavity.
"Why," he said, "here's my legacy left in it safe and sound. No wonder
my good angel made me mad to get that sword again."

"No wonder," echoed Foy, "especially as you got Ramiro with it," and he
glanced at Adrian, who was labouring at the bow oar, looking, now that
the excitement of the fight had gone by, most downcast and wretched.
Well he might, seeing the welcome that, as he feared, awaited him in
Leyden.

For a while they rowed on in silence. All that they had gone through
during the last four and twenty hours and the seven preceding months of
war and privation, had broken their nerve. Even now, although they
had escaped the danger and won back the buried gold, capturing the
arch-villain who had brought them so much death and misery, and their
home, which, for the present moment at any rate, was a strong place of
refuge, lay before them, still they could not be at ease. Where so
many had died, where the risks had been so fearful, it seemed almost
incredible that they four should be living and hale, though weary, with
a prospect of continuing to live for many years.

That the girl whom he loved so dearly, and whom he had so nearly lost,
should be sitting before him safe and sound, ready to become his wife
whensoever he might wish it, seemed to Foy also a thing too good to
be true. Too good to be true was it, moreover, that his brother, the
wayward, passionate, weak, poetical-minded Adrian, made by nature