uce is in it that you missed his heart and could only
pink him in the arm. But go on--go on. Faith! 'tis a wondrous story of
wrong and cruelty."

They were seated in the admiral's cabin on another such hot July day
as that on which St. Georges had been dragged out of the sea with
still a portion of his chain attached to the ring round his ankle, and
which was rapidly sinking him, but the latter was looking in very
different case now. The burnt face was still very black and hollow,
the lines of suffering still plainly marked, as they would be for many
a day, but otherwise all was changed. He was dressed as a gentleman
once more, in a plain but neat suit of blue clothes, guarded with
white cotton lace--it had been the unfortunate lieutenant's. His hair,
which was combed and brushed now, was, although still somewhat
short--it being the custom in the galleys to crop it close to the head
for those days once a month--no longer thick and matted.

St. Georges went on as the admiral bade him; he was telling the whole
story of his life to his host.

"Yet, sir," he continued, "she was no common wanton either, as I heard
afterward, but a lady of Louis's court who loved De Roquemaure.
Doubtless her hate and anger were roused by the words I addressed to
her. And I must have wronged her in one instance at least; it could
scarce have been she who stole my--my poor little babe." And, as ever,
when he mentioned that lost one, his eyes filled with tears. She was
gone from him now, he feared, forever--he had been in that accursed
galley for two years!--how could he hope to see her again on this
earth? No wonder that the tears sprang to his eyes!

The seaman opposite to him certainly wondered not at their doing so;
instead, he passed his own hand before his eyes, as he had done more
than once before in the course of the narrative. Countless men had
been sent to their doom by that hand and by his orders, but that was
in battle; now, as he thought of St. Georges's little lonely child and
wondered if it still lived, his memory wandered back to Monk's Horton,
a pleasant seat in Kent, where his own children were doubtless playing
at their mother's knee, and his brave heart became as tender as a
woman's.

"Poor babe!" he said, "poor babe! Pray God the other woman, the one
who did steal her at Troyes, has some bowels of compassion! Surely she
must have, however base in other respects."

"I pray so night and day," St. Georges said. "O God! h