faintly
rippled by the fresh clean winds of dawn to which their every stitch
of canvas was now spread. Away on the larboard quarter, a faint cloudy
outline, was the coast of Spain.

Sir John's long sallow face was preternaturally grave when he entered
the cabin, where Rosamund awaited him. He bowed to her with a grave
courtesy, doffing his hat and casting it upon a chair. The last five
years had brought some strands of white into his thick black hair,
and at the temples in particular it showed very grey, giving him an
appearance of age to which the deep lines in his brow contributed.

He advanced towards her, as she rose to receive him. "Rosamund, my
dear!" he said gently, and took both her hands. He looked with eyes of
sorrow and concern into her white, agitated face.

"Are you sufficiently rested, child?"

"Rested?" she echoed on a note of wonder that he should suppose it.

"Poor lamb, poor lamb!" he murmured, as a mother might have done, and
drew her towards him, stroking that gleaming auburn head. "We'll speed
us back to England with every stitch of canvas spread. Take heart then,
and...."

But she broke in impetuously, drawing away from him as she spoke, and
his heart sank with foreboding of the thing she was about to inquire.

"I overheard a sailor just now saying to another that it is your intent
to hang Sir Oliver Tressilian out of hand--this morning."

He misunderstood her utterly. "Be comforted," he said. "My justice shall
be swift; my vengeance sure. The yard-arm is charged already with the
rope on which he shall leap to his eternal punishment."

She caught her breath, and set a hand upon her bosom as if to repress
its sudden tumult.

"And upon what grounds," she asked him with an air of challenge,
squarely facing him, "do you intend to do this thing?"

"Upon what grounds?" he faltered. He stared and frowned, bewildered by
her question and its tone. "Upon what grounds?" he repeated, foolishly
almost in the intensity of his amazement. Then he considered her more
closely, and the wildness of her eyes bore to him slowly an explanation
of words that at first had seemed beyond explaining.

"I see!" he said in a voice of infinite pity; for the conviction to
which he had leapt was that her poor wits were all astray after the
horrors through which she had lately travelled. "You must rest," he said
gently, "and give no thought to such matters as these. Leave them to me,
and be very sure that I shall aven