, even if he had
ever seen them, which Tomas Castro doubted.

There was no doubting the sincerity of his tone.

"Oh, you thought _I_ was a pirate!" he muttered. "For a day--yes--to
oblige a Riego, my friend--yes! Moreover, I hate that familiar of the
priests, that soft-spoken Juez, intendente, intriguer--that O'Brien. A
sufferer for the faith! _Que picardia!_ Have I, too, not suffered for
the faith? I am the trusted humble friend of the Riegos. But, perhaps,
you think Don Balthasar is himself a pirate! He who has in his veins the
blood of the Cid Campeador; whose ancestors have owned half this island
since the days of Christopher himself. . . ."

"Has he nothing whatever to do with it?" I asked. "After all, it goes on
in his own town."

"Oh, you English," he muttered; "you are all mad! Would one of your
great nobles be a pirate? Perhaps they would--God knows. Alas, alas!" he
suddenly broke off, "when I think that my Carlos shall leave his bones
in this ungodly place. . . ."

I gave up questioning Tomas Castro; he was too much for me.

We entered the grim palace by the shore through an imposing archway, and
mounted a broad staircase. In a lofty room, giving off the upper gallery
round the central court of the Casa Riego, Carlos lay in a great bed.
I stood before him, having pushed aside Tomas Castro, who had been
cautiously scratching the great brilliant mahogany panels with a dirty
finger-nail.

"Damnation, Carlos!" I said. "This is the third of your treacheries.
What do you want with me?"

You might well have imagined he was a descendant of the Cid Campeador,
only to look at him lying there without a quiver of a feature, his face
stainlessly white, a little bluish in extreme lack of blood, with all
the nobility of death upon it, like an alabaster effigy of an old knight
in a cathedral. On the red-velvet hangings of the bed was an immense
coat-of-arms, worked in silk and surrounded by a collar, with the golden
sheep hanging from the ring. The shield was patched in with an immense
number of quarterings--lions rampant, leopards courant, fleurs de lis,
castles, eagles, hands, and arms. His eyes opened slowly, and his face
assumed an easy, languorous smile of immense pleasure.

"Ah, Juan," he said, "_se bienvenido_, be welcome, be welcome."

Castro caught me roughly by the shoulder, and gazed at me with blazing,
yellow eyes.

"You should not speak roughly to him," he said. "English beast! He is
dying."

"No,