ting about the bush, but spoke out plainly what was on my mind.

"Mary," I said, "I have not come to Aros without a hope. If that should
prove well founded, we may all leave and go somewhere else, secure of
daily bread and comfort; secure, perhaps, of something far beyond that,
which it would seem extravagant in me to promise. But there's a hope
that lies nearer to my heart than money." And at that I paused. "You can
guess fine what that is, Mary," I said. She looked away from me in
silence, and that was small encouragement, but I was not to be put off.
"All my days I have thought the world of you," I continued; "the time
goes on and I think always 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?"

"Oh, 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 havena 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 gre