“And thy secret?” said the holy father.
“Shall be told afterwards,” answered the dying man. “Come, my time is short. Shrive me quickly.”
The Padre hesitated. “Couldst thou not tell this secret first?”
“Impossible!” said the dying man, with what seemed to the Padre a momentary gleam of triumph. Then, as his breath grew feebler, he called impatiently, “Shrive me! shrive me!”
“Let me know at least what this secret concerns?” suggested the Padre, insinuatingly.
“Shrive me first,” said the dying man.
But the priest still hesitated, parleying with the sufferer until the ship's bell struck, when, with a triumphant, mocking laugh from the stranger, the vessel suddenly fell to pieces, amid the rushing of waters which at once involved the dying man, the priest, and the mysterious stranger.
The Padre did not recover his consciousness until high noon the next day, when he found himself lying in a little hollow between the Mission Hills, and his faithful mule a few paces from him, cropping the sparse herbage. The Padre made the best of his way home, but wisely abstained from narrating the facts mentioned above, until after the discovery of gold, when the whole of this veracious incident was related, with the assertion of the padre that the secret which was thus mysteriously snatched from his possession was nothing more than the discovery of gold, years since, by the runaway sailors from the expedition of Sir Francis Drake.