"Perhaps you have heard also that I
did it for a consideration."

"Yes, they told me that too, and small blame to you. If only that old
fool Soa had let me into the secret of those rubies, I would have had
a try for them years ago, as of course you will when I am gone. Well,
I hope that you may get them. But I have no time to talk of rubies, for
death has caught me at last, through my own fault as usual. If you ever
take a drop, Outram, be warned by me and give it up; but you don't look
as if you did; you look as I used to, before I learnt to tackle a bottle
of rum at a sitting.

"Now listen, comrade, I am in a hole, not about myself, for that must
have come sooner or later, and it does not much matter when the world
is rid of a useless fellow like me; but about my girl here. What is to
become of her? I have not got a cent; those cursed slavers have cleared
me out, and she has no friend. How should she have, when I have been
thirty years away from England?

"Look here, I am going to do the only thing I can do. I am going to
leave my daughter in your charge, though it is rough on you, and as you
deal with her, so may Heaven deal with you! I understand that there was
some ceremony of marriage between you down yonder. I don't know how you
take that, either of you, or how far the matter will go when I am dead.
But if it goes any way at all, I trust to your honour, as an English
gentleman, to repeat that ceremony the first time you come to a
civilised country. If you do not care for each other, however, then
Juanna must shift, as other women have to do, poor things. She can look
after herself, and I suppose that her face will help her to a husband
some time. There is one thing: though she hasn't a pound, she is the
best girl that ever stepped, and of as good blood as you can be. There
is no older family than the Rodds in Lincolnshire, and she is the last
of them that I know of; also, her mother was well-born, although she was
a Portugee.

"And now, do you accept the trust?"

"I would gladly," answered Leonard, "but how can I? I propose to go
after these rubies. Would it not be better that Father Francisco here
should take your daughter to the coast? I have a little money which is
at her disposal."

"No," answered the dying man with energy, "I will only trust her to you.
If you want to search for these rubies, and you would be a fool not to,
she must accompany you--that is all. I know that you will look after
her, and