laying a snare for the life of
the man whom, next to Drake and Grenville, he most admired on earth.

But Don Guzman, on the other hand, seemed to have an instinct that that
book might be a fatal gift to his captor; for one day ere Amyas had
looked into it, he began questioning the Don about El Dorado. Whereon
Don Guzman replied with one of those smiles of his, which (as Amyas said
afterwards) was so abominably like a sneer, that he had often hard work
to keep his hands off the man--

"Ah! You have been eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, senor?
Well; if you have any ambition to follow many another brave captain
to the pit, I know no shorter or easier path than is contained in that
little book."

"I have never opened your book," said Amyas; "your private manuscripts
are no concern of mine: but my man who recovered your baggage read
part of it, knowing no better; and now you are at liberty to tell me as
little as you like."

The "man," it should be said, was none other than Salvation Yeo, who
had attached himself by this time inseparably to Amyas, in quality of
body-guard: and, as was common enough in those days, had turned soldier
for the nonce, and taken under his patronage two or three rusty bases
(swivels) and falconets (four-pounders), which grinned harmlessly enough
from the tower top across the cheerful expanse of bog.

Amyas once asked him, how he reconciled this Irish sojourn with his vow
to find his little maid? Yeo shook his head.

"I can't tell, sir, but there's something that makes me always to think
of you when I think of her; and that's often enough, the Lord knows.
Whether it is that I ben't to find the dear without your help; or
whether it is your pleasant face puts me in mind of hers; or what, I
can't tell; but don't you part me from you, sir, for I'm like Ruth,
and where you lodge I lodge; and where you go I go; and where you
die--though I shall die many a year first--there I'll die, I hope and
trust; for I can't abear you out of my sight; and that's the truth
thereof."

So Yeo remained with Amyas, while Cary went elsewhere with Sir Warham
St. Leger, and the two friends met seldom for many months; so that
Amyas's only companion was Don Guzman, who, as he grew more familiar,
and more careless about what he said and did in his captor's presence,
often puzzled and scandalized him by his waywardness. Fits of deep
melancholy alternated with bursts of Spanish boastfulness, utterly
astonish