“Here’s a health,” said Foy as he drank, “to the memory of Mother Martha, who saved us all. Well, she died as she would have wished to die, taking a Spaniard for company, and her story will live on.” “Amen,” said Martin. Then a thought struck him, and, leaving his oars for a minute, for he rowed two as against Foy’s and Adrian’s one, he went forward to where Ramiro lay stricken senseless on the kegs of specie and jewels in the bows, and took from him the great sword Silence. But he strapped the Spaniard’s legs together with his belt. “That crack on the head keeps him quiet enough,” he said in explanation, “but he might come to and give trouble, or try to swim for it, since such cats have many lives. Ah! Señor Ramiro, I told you I would have my sword back before I was half an hour older, or go where I shouldn’t want one.” Then he touched the spring in the hilt and examined the cavity. “Why,” he said, “here’s my legacy left in it safe and sound. No wonder my good angel made me mad to get that sword again.” “No wonder,” echoed Foy, “especially as you got Ramiro with it,” and he glanced at Adrian, who was labouring at the bow oar, looking, now that the excitement of the fight had gone by, most downcast and wretched. Well he might, seeing the welcome that, as he feared, awaited him in Leyden. For a while they rowed on in silence. All that they had gone through during the last four and twenty hours and the seven preceding months of war and privation, had broken their nerve. Even now, although they had escaped the danger and won back the buried gold, capturing the arch-villain who had brought them so much death and misery, and their home, which, for the present moment at any rate, was a strong place of refuge, lay before them, still they could not be at ease. Where so many had died, where the risks had been so fearful, it seemed almost incredible that they four should be living and hale, though weary, with a prospect of continuing to live for many years. That the girl whom he loved so dearly, and whom he had so nearly lost, should be sitting before him safe and sound, ready to become his wife whensoever he might wish it, seemed to Foy also a thing too good to be true. Too good to be true was it, moreover, that his brother, the wayward, passionate, weak, poetical-minded Adrian, made by nature to be the tool of others, and bear the burden of their evil doing, should have been dragged before it was over late, out of the net of the fowler, have repented of his sins and follies, and, at the risk of his own life, shown that he was still a man, no longer the base slave of passion and self-love. For Foy always loved his brother, and knowing him better than any others knew him, had found it hard to believe that however black things might look against him, he was at heart a villain.