erstand it, that I was paid a matter of
two hundred pound by your brother, Master Lionel Tressilian, to carry
you off to Barbary and there sell you for a slave. Is that plain to
you?"

"As plain as it is false. You lie, you dog!"

"Softly, softly!" quoth Master Leigh, good-humouredly.

"I say you lie!"

Master Leigh considered him a moment. "Sets the wind so!" said he at
length, and without another word he rose and went to a sea-chest ranged
against the wooden wall of the cabin. He opened it and took thence a
leather bag. From this he produced a handful of jewels. He thrust them
under Sir Oliver's nose. "Haply," said he, "ye'll be acquainted with
some of them. They was given me to make up the sum since your brother
had not the whole two hundred pound in coin. Take a look at them."

Sir Oliver recognized a ring and a long pear-shaped pearl earring that
had been his brother's; he recognized a medallion that he himself had
given Lionel two years ago; and so, one by one, he recognized every
trinket placed before him.

His head drooped to his breast, and he sat thus awhile like a man
stunned. "My God!" he groaned miserably, at last. "Who, then, is left to
me! Lionel too! Lionel!" A sob shook the great frame. Two tears slowly
trickled down that haggard face and were lost in the stubble of beard
upon his chin. "I am accursed!" he said.

Never without such evidence could he have believed this thing. From the
moment that he was beset outside the gates of Godolphin Court he had
conceived it to be the work of Rosamund, and his listlessness was
begotten of the thought that she could have suffered conviction of his
guilt and her hatred of him to urge her to such lengths as these. Never
for an instant had he doubted the message delivered him by Lionel that
it was Mistress Rosamund who summoned him. And just as he believed
himself to be going to Godolphin Court in answer to her summons, so did
he conclude that the happening there was the real matter to which
she had bidden him, a thing done by her contriving, her answer to his
attempt on the previous day to gain speech with her, her manner of
ensuring that such an impertinence should never be repeated.

This conviction had been gall and wormwood to him; it had drugged his
very senses, reducing him to a listless indifference to any fate that
might be reserved him. Yet it had not been so bitter a draught as this
present revelation. After all, in her case there were some grounds