tation of the lurking force in
his son, he hastened to change the subject.

"I had almost forgotten that you always had a taste for art, Jack."

"Yes, from her;" which was hardly changing the subject.

"As for the first John Wingfield, you may be sure that I wanted to know
everything there was to know about the old fellow," said the father. "So
I set a lot of bookworms looking up the archives of the English and
Spanish governments and digging around in the libraries after material.
Then I had it all put together in proper shape by a literary sharp."

"You have that!" cried Jack. "You have the framework from which you can
build the whole story of him--the story of how he fought and how
Velasquez came to paint him? Oh, I want to read it!" With an unexplored
land between gilt-tooled covers under his arm he went upstairs early, in
the transport of wanderlust that had sent him away over the sand from
Little Rivers. _Si, si_, Firio, outward bound, camp under the stars! If
Senor Don't Care's desert journeys were over--and he had no thought but
that they were--there was no ban on travelling in fancy over sea trails
in the ancestor's company.

Jack was with the buccaneer when he boarded the enemy at the head of his
men; with him before the Board of Admiralty when, a young captain of
twenty-two, he refused to lie to save his skin; with him when, in answer
to the scolding of Elizabeth, then an old woman, he said: "It is glorious
for one who fought so hard for Your Majesty to have the recognition even
of Your Majesty's chiding in answer to the protest of the Spanish
ambassador," which won Elizabeth's reversal of the Admiralty's decision;
with him when, in a later change of fortune, he went to the court of
Spain for once on a mission which required a sheathed blade; with him
when the dark eye of Velasquez, who painted men and women of his time
while his colleagues were painting Madonnas, glowed with a discoverer's
joy at sight of this fair-haired type of the enemy, whom he led away to
his studio.

More than once was there mention of the fact that this terrible fighter
was gentle with women and fonder of the company of children than of
statesmen or courtiers. He had married the daughter of a great merchant,
a delicate type of beauty; the last to fascinate a buccaneer, according
to the gossips of the time. Rumor had it that he had taken her for the
wherewithal to pay the enormous debts contracted in his latest exploit.
To dispro