“I ought to know it,” Walter answered sadly. “Has He not sent me here for my sins?” With a long shuddering sigh he thought of his treason to his mother, and his weak denial of his mother’s faith. And again he wept—wept and sobbed aloud. For after a long drought the rain-clouds are apt to hang heavily; and it is not the first shower or the second that will clear the sky. “Weep on,” said his comrade. “God has set you two lessons. One—your own sin—you are learning now; the other He will teach you by-and-by.” But though Walter’s right hand neighbour desired him to weep on, his “oar-fellow,” who sat on the bench above him, was of another mind. This man, who had been captain of a gang of robbers in the wilds of the Sierra Morena, bestowed a hearty kick and curse on his young comrade. “Hold your peace, English heretic,” he said; “else I will call the commissary, and put it to his conscience as a good Catholic, whether it is not penance enough to be beaten all day like a hound, without being kept awake all night like an owl.” Walter thought it best to take this gentle hint. He rested his weary head upon his oar, the only pillow it had known for months, and tried to sleep. But sleep would not come to him. Thoughts came instead, crowding thick and fast upon him—thoughts of home, of his mother. No wonder that he wept on still, though noiselessly, lest he should awaken his companions. At last he raised his head quietly; and through the mild gloom of the tropical night, which was not darkness, he looked cautiously at his right-hand neighbour, or—as in thought he had already begun to call him—his friend. Doubtful whether the thin gray hair that fell over the oar concealed the face of a sleeper, Walter gently touched the ragged sleeve. “_Quien va?_” the Spaniard responded, turning to him at once, with a questioning look in his keen dark eyes, where the fire burned still, undimmed by the sorrows that had turned his raven hair to gray, and worn his stalwart frame to a skeleton. “That _other lesson_? What is it? Tell me, camerado.” For a minute’s space the galley-slave was silent. Then, in a voice scarcely raised above a whisper, but so clear and distinct that every word stood out as if read by a lightning flash, he repeated,—“‘The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth. He will fulfil the desire of them that fear Him, He also will hear their cry, and will save them.’ Ay, señor, even in the galleys!” XXIV. At the Oar. “Old faces look upon me, Old forms go crowding past.” AYTOUN. Walter Grey slept at last; weariness of body gaining the victory over sorrow of heart. He was wakened from a dream of home, more vivid than any he had known for months, by curses and blows and cries of pain, the usual matins of the galley-slave.