n! There's not such a piece in
London; no, nor in Alexandria, I'll warrant; nor short of Calicut, where
it came from. . . . Look here again, there's a golden cup! I bought that
of one that was out with Pizarro in Peru. And look here, again!"--and
the old man gloated over the treasure.

"And whom do you think I kept all these for? These were for her
wedding-day--for her wedding-day. For your wedding-day, if you'd been
minded, sir! Yes, yours, sir! And yet, I believe, I was so ambitious
that I would not have let her marry under an earl, all the while I was
pretending to be too proud to throw her at the head of a squire's son.
Ah, well! There was my idol, sir. I made her mad, I pampered her up with
gewgaws and vanity; and then, because my idol was just what I had made
her, I turned again and rent her.

"And now," said he, pointing to the open chest, "that was what I meant;
and that" (pointing to the empty bed) "was what God meant. Never mind.
Come downstairs and finish your wine. I see you don't care about it all.
Why should you! you are not her father, and you may thank God you are
not. Go, and be merry while you can, young sir! . . . And yet, all this
might have been yours. And--but I don't suppose you are one to be won
by money--but all this may be yours still, and twenty thousand pounds to
boot."

"I want no money, sir, but what I can earn with my own sword."

"Earn my money, then!"

"What on earth do you want of me!"

"To keep your oath," said Salterne, clutching his arm, and looking up
into his face with searching eyes.

"My oath! How did you know that I had one?"

"Ah! you were well ashamed of it, I suppose, next day! A drunken frolic
all about a poor merchant's daughter! But there is nothing hidden that
shall not be revealed, nor done in the closet that is not proclaimed on
the house-tops."

"Ashamed of it, sir, I never was: but I have a right to ask how you came
to know it?"

"What if a poor fat squinny rogue, a low-born fellow even as I am,
whom you had baffled and made a laughing-stock, had come to me in my
loneliness and sworn before God that if you honorable gentlemen would
not keep your words, he the clown would?"

"John Brimblecombe?"

"And what if I had brought him where I have brought you, and shown
him what I have shown you, and, instead of standing as stiff as any
Spaniard, as you do, he had thrown himself on his knees by that bedside,
and wept and prayed, sir, till he opened my hard hear