gh spending every spare hour in working
for the poor, and visiting them in their cottages. She 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 thank-offering to God. She is puzzled; her notion of
a thank-offering was rather that of the Indians, and indeed of the
Spaniards,--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. To 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 Piac