dden fear of the
hereafter.

"I shall do better," said Sir Oliver at last. "I shall pray for you--to
Sir John Killigrew, that your life be spared."

"Sure he'll never heed you!" said Master Leigh with a catch in his
breath.

"He shall. His honour is concerned in it. The terms of my surrender were
that none else aboard the galley should suffer any hurt."

"But I killed Master Lionel."

"True--but that was in the scrimmage that preceded my making terms. Sir
John pledged me his word, and Sir John will keep to it when I have made
it clear to him that honour demands it."

A great burden was lifted from the skipper's mind--that great shadow of
the fear of death that had overhung him. With it, it is greatly to be
feared that his desperate penitence also departed. At least he talked
no more of damnation, nor took any further thought for Sir Oliver's
opinions and beliefs concerning the hereafter. He may rightly have
supposed that Sir Oliver's creed was Sir Oliver's affair, and that
should it happen to be wrong he was scarcely himself a qualified person
to correct it. As for himself, the making of his soul could wait until
another day, when the necessity for it should be more imminent.

Upon that he lay down and attempted to compose himself to sleep, though
the pain in his head proved a difficulty. Finding slumber impossible
after a while he would have talked again; but by that time his
companion's regular breathing warned him that Sir Oliver had fallen
asleep during the silence.

Now this surprised and shocked the skipper. He was utterly at a loss to
understand how one who had lived Sir Oliver's life, been a renegade and
a heathen, should be able to sleep tranquilly in the knowledge that at
dawn he was to hang. His belated Christian zeal prompted him to rouse
the sleeper and to urge him to spend the little time that yet remained
him in making his peace with God. Humane compassion on the other
hand suggested to him that he had best leave him in the peace of that
oblivion. Considering matters he was profoundly touched to reflect that
in such a season Sir Oliver could have found room in his mind to think
of him and his fate and to undertake to contrive that he should be saved
from the rope. He was the more touched when he bethought him of the
extent to which he had himself been responsible for all that happened to
Sir Oliver. Out of the consideration of heroism, a certain heroism came
to be begotten in him, and he fell to