measure by the
allusion to any relationship, "not a drop of your base blood pollutes
his veins. I have given you over to him. He will attend to you."

"What means he to do then?"

"You shall see."

"When?"

"To-morrow."

The sombre, sinister, although unknown purpose of the Spaniards had new
terrors lent to it by the utter inability of the buccaneer to foresee
what was to be his punishment. He was a man of the highest courage, the
stoutest heart, yet in that hour he was astonied. His knees smote
together; he clenched his teeth in a vain effort to prevent their
chattering. All his devilry, his assurance, his fortitude, his strength,
seemed to leave him. He stood before them suddenly an old, a broken man,
facing a doom portentous and terrible, without a spark of strength or
resolution left to meet it, whatever it might be. And for the first time
in his life he played the craven, the coward. He moistened his dry lips
and looked eagerly from one face to another in the dark and gloomy ring
that encircled him.

"Lady," he said at last, turning to Mercedes as the most likely of his
enemies to befriend him, "you are a woman. You should be tender hearted.
You don't want to see an old man, old enough to be your father, suffer
some unknown, awful torture? Plead for me! Ask your lover. He will
refuse you nothing now."

There was a dead silence in the room. Mercedes stared at the miserable
wretch making his despairing appeal as if she were fascinated.

"Answer him," said her stern old father, "as a Spanish gentlewoman
should."

It was a grim and terrible age. The gospel under which all lived in
those days was not that of the present. It was a gospel writ in blood,
and fire, and steel.

"An eye for an eye," said the girl slowly, "a tooth for a tooth, life
for life, shame for shame," her voice rising until it rang through the
room. "In the name of my ruined sisters, whose wails come to us this
instant from without, borne hither on the night wind, I refuse to
intercede for you, monster. For myself, the insults you have put upon
me, I might forgive, but not the rest. The taking of one life like yours
can not repay."

"You hear?" cried Alvarado. "Take him away."

"One moment," cried Morgan. "Holy Father--your religion--it teaches to
forgive they say. Intercede for me!"

His eyes turned with faint hope toward the aged priest.

"Not for such as thou," answered the old man looking from him. "I could
forgive this," he tou