With Moore at Corunna

by G. A. Henty

"Why," she exclaimed in surprise, "that is the bishop's! I noticed it on his finger when he came one day to me and scolded me, and said that I should remain a prisoner if it was for years until my obstinate spirit was broken. But how did you get it?"

"Not with the bishop's good-will, you may be sure, Mary," Terence laughed; and he then told her how he had become possessed of it.

The girl looked quite scared.

"It sounds dreadful, doesn't it, Mary, to think that I should have laid hands upon a bishop, and such a bishop, a man who regards himself as the greatest in Portugal. However, there was no other way of getting the ring, and I could not see how, without it, I could persuade the lady superior to leave her convent with you all; and to tell you the truth, I would rather have got it that way than any other. The bishop is, in my opinion, a man who deserves no respect. He has terrorized all the north of Portugal, has caused scores of better men than himself to be imprisoned or put to death, and has now by his folly and ignorance cost the lives of no one knows how many thousand men, and brought about the sack of Oporto."

"Did you hear anything of my mother?" the girl asked.

"No; my Portuguese was not good enough for me to ask questions without risking being detected as a foreigner at once. She has behaved shamefully to you, Mary."

"She never liked me," the girl said, simply. "She and father never got on well together, and I think her dislike began by his taking to me, and my liking to be with him and getting to talk English. There was a terrible quarrel between them once because she accused him of teaching me to be a Protestant, although he never did so. He did give me a Bible, and I used to ask him questions and he answered them, that was all; but as it did seem to me that he was much wiser in all things than she was, I thought that he might be wiser in religion too. I would have given up the property directly they wanted me to, if they would have let me go away to England; but when they took me to the convent and cut off my hair, and forced me to become a nun, I would not give way to them. I never took the vows, Terence; I would not open my lips, but they went on with the service just the same. I was determined that I would not yield. I thought that the English would come some day, and that I might be freed then."

"What would you have done in England if you had gone there, Mary?"

"I should have found your father out, and gone to him. Father told me that your father was his greatest friend, and just before he died he told me that he had privately sent over all his own money to a bank at Cork, and ordered it to be put in your father's name. It was a good deal of money, for he would not give up the business when he married my mother, though she wanted him to; but he said that he could not live in idleness on her money, and that he must be doing something. And I know that he kept up the house in Oporto, while she kept up her place in the country. He told me that the sum he had sent over was £20,000. That will be enough to live on, won't it?"

"Plenty," Terence laughed. "I had no idea that I was rescuing such an heiress. I was sure that there was no chance of your getting your mother's money, at any rate, as long as the bishop was leader of Oporto. However just your claim, no judge would decide in your favour."