“And whom do you think I kept all these for? These were for her wedding-day--for her wedding-day. For your wedding-day, if you'd been minded, sir! Yes, yours, sir! And yet, I believe, I was so ambitious that I would not have let her marry under an earl, all the while I was pretending to be too proud to throw her at the head of a squire's son. Ah, well! There was my idol, sir. I made her mad, I pampered her up with gewgaws and vanity; and then, because my idol was just what I had made her, I turned again and rent her. “And now,” said he, pointing to the open chest, “that was what I meant; and that” (pointing to the empty bed) “was what God meant. Never mind. Come downstairs and finish your wine. I see you don't care about it all. Why should you! you are not her father, and you may thank God you are not. Go, and be merry while you can, young sir! . . . And yet, all this might have been yours. And--but I don't suppose you are one to be won by money--but all this may be yours still, and twenty thousand pounds to boot.” “I want no money, sir, but what I can earn with my own sword.” “Earn my money, then!” “What on earth do you want of me!” “To keep your oath,” said Salterne, clutching his arm, and looking up into his face with searching eyes. “My oath! How did you know that I had one?” “Ah! you were well ashamed of it, I suppose, next day! A drunken frolic all about a poor merchant's daughter! But there is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed, nor done in the closet that is not proclaimed on the house-tops.” “Ashamed of it, sir, I never was: but I have a right to ask how you came to know it?” “What if a poor fat squinny rogue, a low-born fellow even as I am, whom you had baffled and made a laughing-stock, had come to me in my loneliness and sworn before God that if you honorable gentlemen would not keep your words, he the clown would?” “John Brimblecombe?” “And what if I had brought him where I have brought you, and shown him what I have shown you, and, instead of standing as stiff as any Spaniard, as you do, he had thrown himself on his knees by that bedside, and wept and prayed, sir, till he opened my hard heart for the first and last time, and I fell down on my sinful knees and wept and prayed by him?” “I am not given to weeping, Mr. Salterne,” said Amyas; “and as for praying, I don't know yet what I have to pray for, on her account: my business is to work. Show me what I can do; and when you have done that, it will be full time to upbraid me with not doing it.” “You can cut that fellow's throat.” “It will take a long arm to reach him.” “I suppose it is as easy to sail to the Spanish Main as it was to sail round the world.” “My good sir,” said Amyas, “I have at this moment no more worldly goods than my clothes and my sword, so how to sail to the Spanish Main, I don't quite see.”