ght of what those beloved ones might be enduring a
few short days hence, from a profligate and fanatical soldiery, or from
the more deliberate fiendishness of the Inquisition. The massacre of St.
Bartholomew, the fires of Smithfield, the immolation of the Moors,
the extermination of the West Indians, the fantastic horrors of the
Piedmontese persecution, which make unreadable the too truthful pages
of Morland,--these were the spectres, which, not as now, dim and distant
through the mist of centuries, but recent, bleeding from still gaping
wounds, flitted before the eyes of every Englishman, and filled his
brain and heart with fire.

He knew full well the fate in store for him and his. One false step, and
the unspeakable doom which, not two generations afterwards, befell the
Lutherans of Magdeburg, would have befallen every town from London to
Carlisle. All knew the hazard, as they prayed that day, and many a day
before and after, throughout England and the Netherlands. And none knew
it better than she who was the guiding spirit of that devoted land,
and the especial mark of the invaders' fury; and who, by some Divine
inspiration (as men then not unwisely held), devised herself the daring
stroke which was to anticipate the coming blow.

But where is Amyas Leigh all this while? Day after day he has been
seeking the Sta. Catharina in the thickest of the press, and cannot come
at her, cannot even hear of her: one moment he dreads that she has sunk
by night, and balked him of his prey; the next, that she has repaired
her damages, and will escape him after all. He is moody, discontented,
restless, even (for the first time in his life) peevish with his men. He
can talk of nothing but Don Guzman; he can find no better employment,
at every spare moment, than taking his sword out of the sheath, and
handling it, fondling it, talking to it even, bidding it not to fail him
in the day of vengeance. At last, he has sent to Squire, the armorer,
for a whetstone, and, half-ashamed of his own folly, whets and polishes
it in bye-corners, muttering to himself. That one fixed thought of
selfish vengeance has possessed his whole mind; he forgets England's
present need, her past triumph, his own safety, everything but his
brother's blood. And yet this is the day for which he has been longing
ever since he brought home that magic horn as a fifteen years boy; the
day when he should find himself face to face with an invader, and
that invader Anti