wonder that they were not merry? Indeed no funeral feast could have been
more sad, for flowers and wine and fair women do not make pleasure, and
after all it was a funeral feast--for me.

At length it came to an end and I fled to my own apartments, whither my
three wives followed me, for Otomie did not come, calling me most happy
and blessed who to-morrow should be with myself, that is with my own
godhead, in heaven. But I did not call them blessed, for, rising in
wrath, I drove them away, saying that I had but one comfort left, and it
was that wherever I might go I should leave them behind.

Then I cast myself upon the cushions of my bed and mourned in my fear
and bitterness of heart. This was the end of the vengeance which I had
sworn to wreak on de Garcia, that I myself must have my heart torn from
my breast and offered to a devil. Truly Fonseca, my benefactor, had
spoken words of wisdom when he counselled me to take my fortune and
forget my oath. Had I done so, to-day I might have been my betrothed's
husband and happy in her love at home in peaceful England, instead of
what I was, a lost soul in the power of fiends and about to be offered
to a fiend. In the bitterness of the thought and the extremity of my
anguish I wept aloud and prayed to my Maker that I might be delivered
from this cruel death, or at the least that my sins should be forgiven
me, so that to-morrow night I might rest at peace in heaven.

Thus weeping and praying I sank into a half sleep, and dreamed that I
walked on the hillside near the church path that runs through the garden
of the Lodge at Ditchingham. The whispers of the wind were in the trees
which clothe the bank of the Vineyard Hills, the scent of the sweet
English flowers was in my nostrils and the balmy air of June blew on my
brow. It was night in this dream of mine, and I thought that the moon