“The treasure is yours, sir,” he said to Amyas.  “I have enough, and more than enough.  And if I have a claim in law for aught, which I know not, neither shall ever ask—­why, if you are not too proud, accept that claim as a plain burgher’s thank-offering to you, sir, for a great and a noble love which you and your brother have shown to one who, though I say it to my shame, was not worthy thereof.”

That night old Salterne was found dead, kneeling by his daughter’s bed.  His will lay by him.  Any money due to him as owner of the Rose, and a new barque of 300 tons burden, he had bequeathed to Captain Amyas Leigh, on condition that he should re-christen that barque the Vengeance, and with her sail once more against the Spaniard.

In the summer of 1588 comes the great Armada, and Captain Leigh has the Vengeance fitted out for war, and is in the English Channel.  He has found out that Don Guzman is on board the Santa Catherina, and is set on taking his revenge.

For twelve months past this hatred of Don Guzman has been eating out his heart, and now the hour has struck.  But the Armada melts away in the storms of the North Sea, and Captain Leigh has pursued the Santa Catherina round the Orkneys and down to Lundy Island.  And there, on the rock called the Shutter, the Santa Catherina strikes, and then vanishes for ever and ever.

“Shame!” cried Amyas, hurling his sword far into the sea, “to lose my right, when it was in my very grasp!”

A crack which rent the sky, a bright world of flame, and then a blank of utter darkness.  The great proud sea captain has been struck blind by the flash of lightning.

* * * * *

Once more Amyas Leigh has come home.  His work is over, his hatred dead.  And Ayacanora will comfort him.

“Amyas, my son,” said Mrs. Leigh, “fear not to take her to your heart, for it is your mother who has laid her there!”

“It is true, after all,” said Amyas to himself.  “What God has joined together, man cannot put asunder.”

* * * * *

HENRY KINGSLEY

Geoffry Hamlyn

Henry Kingsley, younger brother of Charles Kingsley, was born at Barnack, Northamptonshire, England, Jan. 2, 1830.  Leaving Worcester College, Oxford, in 1853, he, with a number of fellow-students, emigrated to the Australian goldfields.  After some five years of unremunerative toil he returned to England, poor in pocket, but possessing sufficient knowledge of life to justify his adoption of a literary career.  His first attempt, and perhaps his most successful, was “The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn,” published in 1859, which was based largely on his own experiences in Australia.  From that time until his death on May 24, 1876, some nineteen stories flowed in quick succession from his pen, none of them, however, reaching the high standard of his first two—­“Geoffry Hamlyn” and “Ravenshoe.”  In 1869 Kingsley became editor of the Edinburgh “Daily Review,” and on the outbreak of the Franco-German War represented that paper at the front.  He was present at the battle of Sedan, and was the first Englishman to enter the town afterwards.

I.—­In a Devonshire Village