At length came the day of burial, and my mother, wrapped in fair white robes, was laid to her rest in the chancel of the church at Ditchingham, where my father has long been set beside her, hard by the brass effigies that mark the burying place of Lily’s forefather, his wife, and many of their children.  This funeral was the saddest of sights, for the bitterness of my father’s grief broke from him in sobs and my sister Mary swooned away in my arms.  Indeed there were few dry eyes in all that church, for my mother, notwithstanding her foreign birth, was much loved because of her gentle ways and the goodness of her heart.  But it came to an end, and the noble Spanish lady and English wife was left to her long sleep in the ancient church, where she shall rest on when her tragic story and her very name are forgotten among men.  Indeed this is likely to be soon, for I am the last of the Wingfields alive in these parts, though my sister Mary has left descendants of another name to whom my lands and fortune go except for certain gifts to the poor of Bungay and of Ditchingham.

When it was over I went back home.  My father was sitting in the front room well nigh beside himself with grief, and by him was my brother.  Presently he began to assail me with bitter words because I had let the murderer go when God gave him into my hand.

‘You forget, father,’ sneered Geoffrey, ’Thomas woos a maid, and it was more to him to hold her in his arms than to keep his mother’s murderer safely.  But by this it seems he has killed two birds with one stone, he has suffered the Spanish devil to escape when he knew that our mother feared the coming of a Spaniard, and he has made enmity between us and Squire Bozard, our good neighbour, who strangely enough does not favour his wooing.’

‘It is so,’ said my father.  ’Thomas, your mother’s blood is on your hands.’

I listened and could bear this goading injustice no longer.

‘It is false,’ I said, ’I say it even to my father.  The man had killed my mother before I met him riding back to seek his ship at Yarmouth and having lost his way; how then is her blood upon my hands?  As for my wooing of Lily Bozard, that is my matter, brother, and not yours, though perhaps you wish that it was yours and not mine.  Why, father, did you not tell me what you feared of this Spaniard?  I heard some loose talk only and gave little thought to it, my mind being full of other things.  And now I will say something.  You called down God’s curse upon me, father, till such time as I should find this murderer and finish what I had begun.  So be it!  Let God’s curse rest upon me till I do find him.  I am young, but I am quick and strong, and so soon as may be I start for Spain to hunt him there till I shall run him down or know him to be dead.  If you will give me money to help me on my quest, so be it—­if not I go without.  I swear before God and by my mother’s spirit that I will neither rest nor stay till with the very sword that slew her, I have avenged her blood upon her murderer or know him dead, and if I suffer myself to be led astray from the purpose of this oath by aught that is, then may a worse end than hers overtake me, may my soul be rejected in heaven, and my name be shameful for ever upon the earth!’