I crawled under the bushes, and found myself in a low cave. Quietly moving forward, I looked down. The soft dirt on which I stood came abruptly to an end, and a sheer fall of fifteen feet was directly beneath me. Sitting together, facing each other, a candle between them, were Herrick and the old priest, Father Francis. Herrick was talking, and I bent forward to hear what he said. "Yes, the captain has gone forward to meet him now. They will come back together." "A curse on them both!" Francis replied. "What do we care whether they come back or not?" and he leaned forward to peer at Herrick; but the pirate's face was inscrutable. He straightened back with a sigh, and looked up to where I lay. "It is a shame," the priest went on, "to keep so gallant a gentleman here in this hole. If he loves the maid, let him have her, and be hanged to him." "Thou wilt sing a different tune, when I tell the Count what thou hast said," Herrick answered, and he leaned back calmly against the rock. "Hell and the furies!" cried the old rogue, his face white with terror. "Thou wouldst not tell what I have said in jest?" "Why not?" answered the sailor. "I could get a handful of gold for it." "Herrick," the priest implored, his face ashy with fright, "ask what thou wilt. I will do anything, if thou wilt but keep secret what I have said to thee here, only in jest," and he arose, a look of terror awful to behold upon his face. "Well, I will keep silent," the pirate answered, seemingly enjoying the fright of his companion, "but only upon one condition, which I will tell thee in a moment. But what said thou awhile ago?--that the Count was half-crazy. Why dost thou say that?" Francis hesitated; then he answered: "Did I not see him walk the floor in agony only a few days ago, and cry out as if in pain? Would a man in his senses do that, thinkest thou?" "It may be that he has something upon his mind that thou dost not know of," the sailor replied, his face grim and stolid. The priest smiled, his wrinkles deepening. "Or perhaps it is more likely this devil of an Englishman that he has upon his hands. A thousand fiends fly away with them both to perdition!" the priest continued, his face flushing with anger. "Betwixt them, I am 'between the devil and the deep blue sea.' The Count swears that he will burn me alive, if I so much as intimate to this fellow what I know about his imprisonment; the Englishman will kill me if I do not tell. Between them I do not know what to do," he finished in a wail of agony. Herrick still looked at him unmoved. I thought I could even discern, from where I lay, a faint trace of irony about his mouth. "And thou wouldst have lost thy head," he rejoined, "if we had not come upon thee in the nick of time, one night three months ago." "What wouldst thou have?" Father Francis cried. "The fool had me fuddled with wine, and offered one a king's ransom. What could I do?"