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a rose garden and lay in my arms until the dark was gone. I thought to run away with her to some new, lovely country, and sink her title in the sea behind us. Perhaps even now I might be living safe in Virginia, with little joys crowding my foot-stool.”

“It is a great pity, sir.” Cœur de Gris was truly sorry for this man.

“Ah, well; her father was informed. On one dark night my arms were pinned to my sides, and she—oh, dear Elizabeth!—was torn away from me. They placed me, still bound, in a ship, and sold me in Barbados. Can you not see, Cœur de Gris, the bitterness that lies restlessly in my heart? During these years, her face has followed me in all my wanderings. Somehow I feel that I might have made some later move—but her father was a powerful lord.”

“And did you never go back for her, after your imprisonment was done?”

Henry Morgan looked down at the floor.

“No, my friend—I never did.”

The legend of the Red Saint grew in his brain like a powerful vine, and a voice came out of the west to coax and mock, to jeer and cozen Henry Morgan. He forgot the sea and his idling ships. The buccaneers were penniless from their long inactivity. They lay about the decks and cursed their captain for a dreaming fool. He struggled