utiful that I have ever known. We were very happy children, and
our beauty was the pride of our father and mother, and the envy of other
parents. I was the darkest of the three, dark indeed to swarthiness, but
in Mary the Spanish blood showed only in her rich eyes of velvet hue,
and in the glow upon her cheek that was like the blush on a ripe
fruit. My mother used to call me her little Spaniard, because of my
swarthiness, that is when my father was not near, for such names angered
him. She never learned to speak English very well, but he would suffer
her to talk in no other tongue before him. Still, when he was not there
she spoke in Spanish, of which language, however, I alone of the family
became a master--and that more because of certain volumes of old Spanish
romances which she had by her, than for any other reason. From my
earliest childhood I was fond of such tales, and it was by bribing me
with the promise that I should read them that she persuaded me to learn
Spanish. For my mother's heart still yearned towards her old sunny home,
and often she would talk of it with us children, more especially in the
winter season, which she hated as I do. Once I asked her if she wished
to go back to Spain. She shivered and answered no, for there dwelt
one who was her enemy and would kill her; also her heart was with us
children and our father. I wondered if this man who sought to kill my
mother was the same as he of whom my father had spoken as 'the chief of
the devils,' but I only answered that no man could wish to kill one so
good and beautiful.

'Ah! my boy,' she said, 'it is just because I am, or rather have been,
beautiful that he hates me. Others would have wedded me besides your
dear father, Thomas.' And her face grew troubled as though with fear.

Now when I was eighteen and a half years old, on a certain evening
in the month of May it happened that a friend of my father's, Squire
Bozard, late of the Hall in this parish, called at the Lodge on his road
from Yarmouth, and in the course of his talk let it fall that a Spanish
ship was at anchor in the Roads, laden with merchandise. My father
pricked up his ears at this, and asked who her captain might be. Squire
Bozard answered that he did not know his name, but that he had seen
him in the market-place, a tall and stately man, richly dressed, with a
handsome face and a scar upon his temple.

At this news my mother turned pale beneath her olive skin, and muttered
in Sp