ys the more of you; I could not think to be happy
or hearty in my life without you: you are the apple of my eye.' Still
she looked away, and said never a word; but I thought I saw that her
hands shook. 'Mary,' I cried in fear, 'do ye no like me?'

'O, Charlie man,' she said, 'is this a time to speak of it? Let me be, a
while; let me be the way I am; it'll not be you that loses by the
waiting!'

I made out by her voice that she was nearly weeping, and this put me out
of any thought but to compose her. 'Mary Ellen,' I said, 'say no more; I
did not come to trouble you: your way shall be mine, and your time too;
and you have told me all I wanted. Only just this one thing more: what
ails you?'

She owned it was her father, but would enter into no particulars, only
shook her head, and said he was not well and not like himself, and it was
a great pity. She knew nothing of the wreck. 'I havenae been near it,'
said she. 'What for would I go near it, Charlie lad? The poor souls are
gone to their account long syne; and I would just have wished they had
ta'en their gear with them--poor souls!'

This was scarcely any great encouragement for me to tell her of the
_Espirito Santo_; yet I did so, and at the very first word she cried out
in surprise. 'There was a man at Grisapol,' she said, 'in the month of
May--a little, yellow, black-avised body, they tell me, with gold rings
upon his fingers, and a beard; and he was speiring high and low for that
same ship.'

It was towards the end of April that I had been given these papers to
sort out by Dr. Robertson: and it came suddenly back upon my mind that
they were thus prepared for a Spanish historian, or a man calling himself
such, who had come with high recommendations to the Principal, on a
mission of inquiry as to the dispersion of the great Armada. Putting one
thing with another, I fancied that the visitor 'with the gold rings upon
his fingers' might be the same with Dr. Robertson's historian from
Madrid. If that were so, he would be more likely after treasure for
himself than information for a learned society. I made up my mind, I
should lose no time over my undertaking; and if the ship lay sunk in
Sandag Bay, as perhaps both he and I supposed, it should not be for the
advantage of this ringed adventurer, but for Mary and myself, and for the
good, old, honest, kindly family of the Darnaways.

CHAPTER III. LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY.

I was early afoot next