Sir John stretched out his hand and
touched the heavy woollen robe that swept from bared throat to rudely
sandalled feet.

"This?" he questioned.

The other faintly smiled. "I found it many months agone in a village of
the Chaymas. I was nigh to nakedness, and it has served me well. It is
only a gown. This"--he touched the knotted girdle--"but a piece
of rope."

"I have seen the boy, Robin-a-dale," said Nevil.

The other inclined his head. "Captain Powell told me as much an hour
ago, and also that by some slip my poor knave slept not, as I had meant
he should, but babbled of old things which have wellnigh turned his
wits. He must not stay in this land, but back to England to feel the
snow in his face, to hear the cuckoo and the lark, to serve you or Arden
or Philip Sidney. What ancient news hath he given you?"

"You went overland to Panama."

"Ay,--a dreadful journey--a most dreadful return ... Don Luiz de
Guardiola was not at Panama. With a strong escort he had gone three days
before to San Juan de Ulloa, whence he sailed for Spain."

A long silence; then said Nevil: "There is no passion in your face, and
your voice is grave and sweet. I thank God that he was gone, and that
your soul has turned from vengeance."

"Ay, my soul hath turned from vengeance," echoed the other. "It is now a
long time that, save for Robin, I have dwelt alone with God His beauty
and God His terror. I have taught a savage people, and in teaching I
have learned." He moved, and with his knee upon the window-seat, looked
out upon the fading stars. "But the blood," he said,--"the blood upon my
hands! I know not if one man who sailed with me upon the _Sea Wraith_ be
alive. Certes, all are dead who went with me a fearful way to find that
Spaniard who is safe in Spain. Six men we reached again the seashore,
but the ship was gone. One by one, as we wandered, the four men died....
Then Robin and I went upward and onward to the mountains."

"When you left England your cause was just," said Nevil, with emotion.

"Ay, I think it was so," Sir Mortimer replied. "At home I was forever
naught; on these seas I might yet serve my Queen, though with a shrunken
arm. And Robert Baldry with many another whom I had betrayed might yet
languish in miserable life. God knows! perhaps I thought that God might
work a miracle.... But at Margarita--"

"I know--I know," interrupted Nevil. "Robin told us."

"Then at Margarita," continued the other, "I forgot all