ou have
seen to-day."

"I have, senor," said Amyas. "You might have given us the slip easily
enough just now, and did not. Pardon me, if I have offended you."

The Spaniard (who, after all, was cross principally with himself and the
"unlucky mare's son," as the old romances have it, which had played him
so scurvy a trick) was all smiles again forthwith; and Amyas, as they
chatted on, could not help asking him next--

"I wonder why you are so frank about your own intentions to an enemy
like me, who will surely forestall you if he can."

"Sir, a Spaniard needs no concealment, and fears no rivalry. He is the
soldier of the Cross, and in it he conquers, like Constantine of old.
Not that you English are not very heroes; but you have not, sir, and
you cannot have, who have forsworn our Lady and the choir of saints, the
same divine protection, the same celestial mission, which enables the
Catholic cavalier single-handed to chase a thousand Paynims."

And Don Guzman crossed himself devoutly, and muttered half-a-dozen Ave
Marias in succession, while Amyas rode silently by his side, utterly
puzzled at this strange compound of shrewdness with fanaticism, of
perfect high-breeding with a boastfulness which in an Englishman would
have been the sure mark of vulgarity.

At last came a letter from Sir Richard Grenville, complimenting Amyas
on his success and promotion, bearing a long and courtly message to Don
Guzman (whom Grenville had known when he was in the Mediterranean, at
the battle of Lepanto), and offering to receive him as his own guest
at Bideford, till his ransom should arrive; a proposition which the
Spaniard (who of course was getting sufficiently tired of the Irish
bogs) could not but gladly accept; and one of Winter's ships, returning
to England in the spring of 1581, delivered duly at the quay of Bideford
the body of Don Guzman Maria Magdalena. Raleigh, after forming for
that summer one of the triumvirate by which Munster was governed after
Ormond's departure, at last got his wish and departed for England and
the Court; and Amyas was left alone with the snipes and yellow mantles
for two more weary years.

CHAPTER X

HOW THE MAYOR OF BIDEFORD BAITED HIS HOOK WITH HIS OWN FLESH

"And therewith he blent, and cried ha!
As though he had been stricken to the harte."

Palamon and Arcite.

So it befell to Chaucer's knight in prison; and so it befell also to Don
Guzman; a