“’Twas surely Father Theodorus!” I cried. “Who is he?” asked Captain Freeman. “An Irish priest that showed me much kindness, for my father’s sake, as he saith,” said I. “Then if he showed you kindness, Master Ned, I would counsel you, for the good man’s own sake (for good he must be, though a Papist), tell no one of his good deeds, or he will surely suffer as you should have done.” “I will take good heed thereto,” says I. “But prythee tell me, captain, how goes it with all at Surat? How fares good Mr Martin and Mr Spender, and all other my friends in the Factory? and did my servant Loll Duss ever return from this place with the message I gave him?” “Mr Martin is well,” says he, “and looks to be made Accountant shortly, when Mr Accountant Cuthell, that now is, shall return to England with his fortune made. Mr Spender is well advanced in the service, though not by his own fault (for there an’t no diligence nor prudence in him), but by the indirect procuring of Mr Secretary his cousin. And of the other gentlemen I can’t speak without you ask me of ’em particularly, for I have clean forgot which on ’em you know, and which are strange to you.” “But what do they say touching me?” asked I; “and have they ever heard what befell me?” “Why truly,” says he, “that Gentue servant of yours, Loll Duss, carried the news of your seizure to Mr Martin, who hath made divers efforts to get news of you since that time, but in vain. Then at last it got abroad that you had converted, and were gone to the Brasils in one of the Portugal plate-carracks, for to end your days there, and it was advised, upon this being rumoured, that word on’t should be sent to the Committee, and that your friends should be told that you were as good as dead. But because Mr Martin and one or two more held out very stoutly against such a treatment of you, they must needs be content with taking your name off the books of the Factory, and by this means stopping your pay, and in this, I believe, they was justified by ancient custom. Yet Mr Martin demanded that his protest should be entered in writing against their so doing, and this was punctually performed, he still believing that you would return. And ’tis thus the matter stands at this present. Mr Secretary and his cousin Mr Spender are prodigious bitter against you, and have moved his honour the President and the Council to their acts of harshness; but Mr Martin is confident in your honesty, and will by no means suffer it to be impugned in his presence.” “Then my course now,” says I, “must be to return to Surat and declare all my ill fortune.”