“Five? Fifty, Mr. Leigh! God forbid that John Hawkins's wife should refuse her last penny to a distressed mariner, and he a gentleman born. But you must eat and drink.”
“It's more than I have done for many a day worth speaking of.”
And Amyas sat down in his rags to a good supper, while Mrs. Hawkins told him all the news which she could of his mother, whom Adrian Gilbert had seen a few months before in London; and then went on, naturally enough, to the Bideford news.
“And by the by, Captain Leigh, I've sad news for you from your place; and I had it from one who was there at the time. You must know a Spanish captain, a prisoner—”
“What, the one I sent home from Smerwick?”
“You sent? Mercy on us! Then, perhaps, you've heard—”
“How can I have heard? What?”
“That he's gone off, the villain?”
“Without paying his ransom?”
“I can't say that; but there's a poor innocent young maid gone off with him, one Salterne's daughter—the Popish serpent!”