‘A Christian physician, seeing that I was a Jew and a stranger, vowed that I had brought the sickness from London. This is the one time I have ever heard a Christian leech speak truth of any disease. Thereupon the people beat me, but a merciful woman said: “Do not kill him now. Push him into our Castle with his plague, and if, as he says, it will abate on the fifteenth day, we can kill him then.” Why not? They drove me across the drawbridge of the Castle, and fled back to their booths. Thus I came to be alone with the treasure.’ ‘But did you know this was all going to happen just right?’ said Una. ‘My Prophecy was that I should be a Lawgiver to a People of a strange land and a hard speech. I knew I should not die. I washed my cuts. I found the tide-well in the wall, and from Sabbath to Sabbath I dove and dug there in that empty, Christian-smelling fortress. Hé! I spoiled the Egyptians! Hé! If they had only known! I drew up many good loads of gold, which I loaded by night into my boat. There had been gold-dust too, but that had been washed away by the tides.’ ‘Didn’t you ever wonder who had put it there?’ said Dan, stealing a glance at Puck’s calm, dark face under the hood of his gown. Puck shook his head and pursed his lips. ‘Often; for the gold was new to me,’ Kadmiel replied. ‘I know the Golds. I can judge them in the dark; but this was heavier and redder than any we deal in. Perhaps it was the very gold of Parvaim. Eh, why not? It went to my heart to heave it on to the mud, but I saw well that if the evil thing remained, or if even the hope of finding it remained, the King would not sign the New Laws, and the land would perish.’ ‘Oh, Marvel!’ said Puck, beneath his breath, rustling in the dead leaves. ‘When the boat was loaded I washed my hands seven times, and pared beneath my nails, for I would not keep one grain. I went out by the little gate where the Castle’s refuse is thrown. I dared not hoist sail lest men should see me; but the Lord commanded the tide to bear me carefully, and I was far from land before the morning.’ ‘Weren’t you afraid?’ said Una. ‘Why? There were no Christians in the boat. At sunrise I made my prayer, and cast the gold—all—all that gold into the deep sea! A King’s ransom—no, the ransom of a People! When I had loosed hold of the last bars, the Lord commanded the tide to return me to a haven at the mouth of a river, and thence I walked across a wilderness to Lewes, where I have brethren. They opened the door to me, and they say—I had not eaten for two days—they say that I fell across the threshold, crying, “I have sunk an army with horsemen in the sea!”’ ‘But you hadn’t,’ said Una. ‘Oh, yes! I see! You meant that King John might have spent it on that?’ ‘Even so,’ said Kadmiel.