“‘I will find you yet,’ he screamed, with many Spanish oaths and foul words. ‘If I must wait for twenty years I will be avenged upon you and all you love. Be assured of this, Luisa de Garcia, hide where you will, I shall find you, and when we meet, you shall come with me for so long as I will keep you or that shall be the hour of your death.’ “Then we sailed away for England, and the boats fell astern. “My sons, this is the story of my youth, and of how I came to wed your mother whom I have buried to-day. Juan de Garcia has kept his word.” “Yet it seems strange,” said my brother, “that after all these years he should have murdered her thus, whom you say he loved. Surely even the evilest of men had shrunk from such a deed!” “There is little that is strange about it,” answered my father. “How can we know what words were spoken between them before he stabbed her? Doubtless he told of some of them when he cried to Thomas that now they would see what truth there was in prophecies. What did de Garcia swear years since?—that she should come with him or he would kill her. Your mother was still beautiful, Geoffrey, and he may have given her choice between flight and death. Seek to know no more, son”—and suddenly my father hid his face in his hands and broke into sobs that were dreadful to hear. “Would that you had told us this tale before, father,” I said so soon as I could speak. “Then there would have lived a devil the less in the world to-day, and I should have been spared a long journey.” Little did I know how long that journey would be! CHAPTER VI GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART Within twelve days of the burial of my mother and the telling of the story of his marriage to her by my father, I was ready to start upon my search. As it chanced a vessel was about to sail from Yarmouth to Cadiz. She was named the “Adventuress,” of one hundred tons burden, and carried wool and other goods outwards, purposing to return with a cargo of wine and yew staves for bows. In this vessel my father bought me a passage. Moreover, he gave me fifty pounds in gold, which was as much as I would risk upon my person, and obtained letters from the Yarmouth firm of merchants to their agents in Cadiz, in which they were advised to advance me such sums as I might need up to a total of one hundred and fifty English pounds, and further to assist me in any way that was possible.