or the benefits received from him, and added
that sooner would he have suffered them to hang him than have spoken
could he have foreseen the consequences of his testimony.

So far Sir Oliver read unmoved by any feeling other than cold contempt.
But there was more to follow. The letter went on to tell him that
Mistress Rosamund was newly returned from a two years' sojourn in France
to become betrothed to his half-brother Lionel, and that they were to
be wed in June. He was further informed that the marriage had been
contrived by Sir John Killigrew in his desire to see Rosamund settled
and under the protection of a husband, since he himself was proposing
to take the seas and was fitting out a fine ship for a voyage to the
Indies. The writer added that the marriage was widely approved, and it
was deemed to be an excellent measure for both houses, since it would
weld into one the two contiguous estates of Penarrow and Godolphin
Court.

Oliver-Reis laughed when he had read thus far. The marriage was approved
not for itself, it would seem, but because by means of it two stretches
of earth were united into one. It was a marriage of two parks, of two
estates, of two tracts of arable and forest, and that two human
beings were concerned in it was apparently no more than an incidental
circumstance.

Then the irony of it all entered his soul and spread it with bitterness.
After dismissing him for the supposed murder of her brother, she was
to take the actual murderer to her arms. And he, that cur, that false
villain!--out of what depths of hell did he derive the courage to go
through with this mummery?--had he no heart, no conscience, no sense of
decency, no fear of God?

He tore the letter into fragments and set about effacing the matter from
his thoughts. Pitt had meant kindly by him, but had dealt cruelly. In
his efforts to seek distraction from the torturing images ever in his
mind he took to the sea with three galleys, and thus some two weeks
later came face to face with Master Jasper Leigh aboard the Spanish
carack which he captured under Cape Spartel.

CHAPTER III. HOMEWARD BOUND

In the cabin of the captured Spaniard, Jasper Leigh found himself that
evening face to face with Sakr-el-Bahr, haled thither by the corsair's
gigantic Nubians.

Sakr-el-Bahr had not yet pronounced his intentions concerning the
piratical little skipper, and Master Leigh, full conscious that he was
a villain, feared the worst, and ha