o and search the fellow, captain?"

"Better, I think," said Amyas.

Raleigh went gently to the girl, and spoke to her in English. She looked
up at him, his armor and his plume, with wide and wondering eyes, and
then shook her head, and returned to her lamentation.

Raleigh gently laid his hand on her arm, and lifted her up, while Yeo
and Amyas bent over the corpse.

It was the body of a large and coarse-featured man, but wasted and
shrunk as if by famine to a very skeleton. The hands and legs were
cramped up, and the trunk bowed together, as if the man had died of cold
or famine. Yeo drew back the clothes from the thin bosom, while the girl
screamed and wept, but made no effort to stop him.

"Ask her who it is? Yeo, you know a little Irish," said Amyas.

He asked, but the girl made no answer. "The stubborn jade won't tell, of
course, sir. If she were but a man, I'd make her soon enough."

"Ask her who killed him?"

"No one, she says; and I believe she says true, for I can find no wound.
The man has been starved, sirs, as I am a sinful man. God help him,
though he is a priest; and yet he seems full enough down below. What's
here? A big pouch, sirs, stuffed full of somewhat."

"Hand it hither."

The two opened the pouch; papers, papers, but no scrap of food. Then a
parchment. They unrolled it.

"Latin," said Amyas; "you must construe, Don Scholar."

"Is it possible?" said Raleigh, after reading a moment. "This is indeed
a prize! This is Saunders himself!"

Yeo sprang up from the body as if he had touched an adder. "Nick
Saunders, the Legacy, sir?"

"Nicholas Saunders, the legate."

"The villain! why did not he wait for me to have the comfort of killing
him? Dog!" and he kicked the corpse with his foot.

"Quiet! quiet! Remember the poor girl," said Amyas, as she shrieked at
the profanation, while Raleigh went on, half to himself:

"Yes, this is Saunders. Misguided fool, and this is the end! To this
thou hast come with thy plotting and thy conspiring, thy lying and thy
boasting, consecrated banners and Pope's bulls, Agnus Deis and holy
waters, the blessing of all saints and angels, and thy Lady of the
Immaculate Conception! Thou hast called on the heavens to judge between
thee and us, and here is their answer! What is that in his hand, Amyas?
Give it me. A pastoral epistle to the Earl of Ormond, and all nobles of
the realm of Ireland; 'To all who groan beneath the loathsome tyranny
of an illegitimate ad