ey have duly
rendered. My patrimony is not a rich one, but I can promise that this
sum, whether I escape or not, shall be as duly paid. Hush!" he ended
as I sprang to my feet, and Juan and Alonso appeared in the doorway
supporting the trooper, who had only been stunned after all.

"We did not care to kill him," Juan explained blandly, "until we had
the senor's orders."

"You did rightly," I answered, and glanced at my kinsman. His jaw was
set. I pulled out a couple of gold pieces for each. "An advance on
your earnings," said I. "My orders are that you leave the trooper here
with me, ride back instantly to your chief, report that your work has
been well done and successfully, and the money for which he holds
an order shall be forwarded as soon as I return and report to Lord
Wellington in Beira."

MIDSUMMER FIRES

I

In the course of an eventful life John Penaluna did three very rash
things.

To begin with, at seventeen, he ran away to sea.

He had asked his father's permission. But for fifty years the small
estate had been going from bad to worse. John's grandfather in the
piping days of agriculture had drunk the profits and mortgaged
everything but the furniture. On his death, John's father (who had
enlisted in a line regiment) came home with a broken knee-pan and a
motherless boy, and turned market-gardener in a desperate attempt to
rally the family fortunes. With capital he might have succeeded. But
market-gardening required labour; and he could neither afford to hire
it nor to spare the services of a growing lad who cost nothing but his
keep. So John's request was not granted.

A week later, in the twilight of a May evening, John was digging
potatoes on the slope above the harbour, when he heard--away up the
first bend of the river--the crew of the _Hannah Hands_ brigantine
singing as they weighed anchor. He listened for a minute, stuck his
visgy into the soil slipped on his coat, and trudged down to the
ferry-slip.

Two years passed without word of him. Then on a blue and sunny day
in October he emerged out of Atlantic fogs upon the Market Strand at
Falmouth: a strapping fellow with a brown and somewhat heavy face,
silver rings in his ears, and a suit of good sea-cloth on his back. He
travelled by van to Truro, and thence by coach to St. Austell. It was
Friday--market day; and in the market he found his father standing
sentry, upright as his lame leg allowed, grasping a specimen
apple-tree in e