"She was worthy of that and more, sir. like a woman, she died like a saint.”

For if she sinned

"Yes, sir!" answered the old man with a proud smile; "she had the right English blood in her, I doubt not; and showed it at the last.

But now, sir, no more of this.

When you need a ship, mine is at your service; till then, sir, farewell,

and God be with you."

And the old man rose, and with an unmoved countenance, bowed Amyas to the door. Amyas went back and told Cary, bidding him take half of Salterne's gift: but Cary swore a great oath that he would have none of it.

"Heir of Clovelly, Amyas, and want to rob you? I who have lost nothing, you who have lost a brother! God forbid that I should ever touch a farthing beyond my original share!"

That evening a messenger from Bideford came running breathless up to Burrough Court. The authorities wanted Amyas's immediate attendance, for he was one of the last, it seemed, who had seen Mr. Salterne alive.

Salterne had gone over, as soon as Amyas departed, to an old acquaintance; signed and sealed his will in their presence with a firm and cheerful countenance, refusing all condolence; and then gone home, and locked himself into Rose's room. Supper-time came, and he did not appear. The apprentices could not make him answer, and at last called in the neighbours, and forced the door. Salterne was kneeling by his daughter's bed; his head was upon the coverlet; his Prayer-book was open before him at the Burial Service; his hands were clasped in supplication; but he was dead and cold.

His will lay by him. He had left all his property among his poor relations, saving and excepting all money, etc., due to him as owner and part-adventurer of the ship Rose, and his new bark of three hundred tons burden, now lying East-the-water; all which was bequeathed to Captain Amyas Leigh, on condition that he should re-christen that bark the Vengeance, fit her out with part of the treasure, and with her sail once more against the Spaniard, before three years were past.

And this was the end of William Salterne, merchant.

CHAPTER XXIX.

HOW THE VIRGINIA FLEET WAS STOPPED BY THE QUEEN'S COMMAND.

AND now Amyas is settled quietly at home again; and for the next twelve months little passes worthy of record in these pages. Yeo has installed himself as major domo, with no very definite functions, save those of walking about everywhere at Amyas's heels like a lank grey wolf-hound, and spending his evenings at the fireside, as a true old sailor does, with his Bible on his knee, and his hands busy in manufacturing numberless nick-nacks, useful and useless, for every member of the family, and above all for Ayacanora, whom he insults every week by humbly offering some toy only fit for a child; at which she pouts, and is reproved by Mrs. Leigh, and then takes the gift, and puts it away never to look at it again. For her whole soul is set upon being an English maid; and she runs about all day long after Mrs. Leigh, insisting upon learning the mysteries of the kitchen and the stillroom, and, above all, the art of making clothes for herself, and at last for everybody in Northam. For first, she will be a good housewife, like Mrs. Leigh; and next a new idea has dawned on her; that of helping others. To the boundless hospitality of the savage she has been of course accustomed : but to give to those who can give nothing in return, is a new thought. She sees Mrs. Leigh spending every spare hour in working for the poor, and visiting them in their cottages. sees Amyas, after public thanks in church for his safe return, giving away money, food, what not, in Northam, Appledore, and Bideford; buying cottages and making them almshouses for worn-out mariners; and she is told that this is his thankoffering to God. She is puzzled; her notion of a thank-offering was rather that of the Indians, and indeed of the Spaniards,—

She

sacrifices of human victims, and the bedizenment of the Great Spirit's sanctuary with their skulls and bones. Not that Amyas, as a plain old-fashioned churchman, was unmindful of the good old instinctive rule, that something should be given to the Church itself; for the vicar of Northam was soon resplendent with a new surplice, and what was more, the altar with a splendid flagon and salver of plate (lost, I suppose, in the civil wars) which had been taken in the great galleon. Ayacanora could understand that: but the almsgiving she could not, till Mrs. Leigh told her, in her simple way, that whosoever gave to the poor, gave to the Great Spirit; for the Great Spirit was in them, and in Ayacanora too, if she would be quiet and listen to him, instead of pouting, and stamping, and doing nothing but what she liked. And the poor child took in that new thought like a child, and worked her fingers to the bone for all the old dames in Northam, and went about with Mrs. Leigh, lovely and beloved, and looked now and then out from under her long black eyelashes to see if she was winning a smile from Amyas. And on the day on which she won one, she was good all day; and on the day on which she did not, she was thoroughly naughty, and would have worn out the patience of any soul less chastened than Mrs. Leigh's. But as for the pomp and glory of her dress, there was no keeping it within bounds; and she swept into church each Sunday bedizened in Spanish finery, with such a blaze and rustle, that the good vicar had to remonstrate humbly with Mrs. Leigh on the disturbance which she caused to the eyes and thoughts of all his congregation. which Ayacanora answered, that she was not thinking about them, and they need not think about her; and that if the Piache (in plain English, the conjuror), as she supposed, wanted a present, he might have all her Mexican feather-dresses; she would not wear them--they were wild Indian things, and she was an English maid-but they would just do for a Piache; and so darted upstairs, brought them down, and insisted so stoutly on arraying the vicar therein, that the good man beat a swift retreat. But he carried off with him, nevertheless, one of the handsomest mantles, which, instead of selling it, he converted cleverly enough into an altar-cloth; and for several years afterwards, the communion at Northam was celebrated upon a blaze of emerald, azure, and crimson, which had once adorned the sinful body of some Aztec prince.

To

So Ayacanora flaunted on; while Amyas watched her, half amused, half in simple pride of her beauty; and looked around

at all gazers, as much as to say, "See what a fine bird I have brought home!"

Another great trouble which she gave Mrs. Leigh was her conduct to the ladies of the neighbourhood. They came, of course, one and all, not only to congratulate Mrs. Leigh, but to get a peep at the fair savage; but the fair savage snubbed them all round, from the vicar's wife to Lady Grenvile herself, so effectually, that few attempted a second visit.

Mrs. Leigh remonstrated, and was answered by floods of tears. "They only come to stare at a poor wild Indian girl, and she would not be made a show of. She was like a queen

once, and every one obeyed her; but here every one looked down upon her." But when Mrs. Leigh asked her, whether she would sooner go back to the forests, the poor girl clung to her like a baby, and entreated not to be sent away, "She would sooner be a slave in the kitchen here, than go back to the bad people.'

And so on, month after month of foolish storm and foolish sunshine; but she was under the shadow of one in whom was neither storm nor sunshine, but a perpetual genial calm of soft grey weather, which tempered down to its own peacefulness all who entered its charmed influence; and the outbursts grew more and more rare, and Ayacanora more and more rational, though no more happy, day by day.

And one by one small hints came out which made her identity certain, at least in the eyes of Mrs. Leigh and Yeo. After she had become familiar with the sight of houses, she gave them to understand that she had seen such things before. The red cattle, too, seemed not unknown to her; the sheep puzzled her for some time, and at last she gave Mrs. Leigh to understand that they were too small.

"Ah, madam," quoth Yeo, who caught at every straw, "it is because she has been accustomed to those great camel sheep (llamas they call them) in Peru."

But Ayacanora's delight was a horse. The use of tame animals at all was a daily wonder to her; but that a horse could be ridden was the crowning miracle of all; and a horse she would ride, and after plaguing Amyas for one in vain (for he did not want to break her pretty neck), she proposed confidentially to Yeo to steal one, and foiled in that, went to the vicar and offered to barter all her finery for his broken-kneed pony. But the vicar was too honest to drive so good a bargain, and the matter ended in Amyas buying her a jennet, which she learned in a fortnight to ride like a very Guacho.

And now awoke another curious slumbering reminiscence. For one day, at Lady Grenvile's invitation, the whole family went over to Stow; Mrs. Leigh soberly on a pillion behind the groom, Ayacanora cantering round and round upon the moors like a hound let loose, and trying to make Amyas ride races with her. But that night, sleeping in the same room with Mrs. Leigh, she awoke shrieking, and sobbed out a long story how the "Old ape of Panama," her especial abomination, had come to her bedside and dragged her forth into the courtyard, and how she had mounted a horse and ridden with an Indian over great moors and high mountains down into a dark wood, and there the Indian and the horses vanished, and she found herself suddenly changed once more into a little savage child. So strong was the impression, that she could not be persuaded that the thing had not happened, if not that night, at least some night or other. So Mrs. Leigh at last believed the same, and told the company next morning in her pious way how the Lord had revealed in a vision to the poor child who she was, and how she had been exposed in the forests by her jealous stepfather, and neither Sir Richard nor his wife could doubt but that hers was the true solution. It was probable that Don Xararte, though his home was Panama, had been often at Quito, for Yeo had seen him come on board the Lima ship at Guayaquil, one of the nearest ports. This would explain her having been found by the Indians beyond Cotopaxi, the nearest peak of the Eastern Andes, if, as was but too likely, the old man, believing her to be Oxenham's child, had conceived the fearful vengeance of exposing her in the forests.

Other little facts came to light one by one. They were all connected (as was natural in a savage) with some animal or other natural object. Whatever impressions her morals or affections had received, had been erased by the long spiritual death of that forest sojourn; and Mrs. Leigh could not elicit from her a trace of feeling about her mother, or recollection of any early religious teaching. This link, however, was supplied at last, and in this way.

Sir Richard had brought home an Indian with him from Virginia. Of his original name I am not sure, but he was probably the "Wanchese" whose name occurs with that of "Manteo."

This man was to be baptized in the church at Bideford by the name of Raleigh, his sponsors being most probably Raleigh himself, who may have been there on Virginian business, and Sir