imagination. Show them an acorn, and straightway they saw a forest of
oaks; an inch of a rainbow, and the mind grasped the whole vast arch,
zenith-reaching, seven-colored, enclosing far horizons. So now, in
addition to the gleaming fragments upon the table before them, they saw
mountain ranges with ledges of rock all sparkling like this ore, deep
mines with Indian workers, pack-trains, and burdened holds of ships.

After a time one lifted a piece of the ore, hesitatingly, as though he
made to take up all the Indies, scrutinized it closely, weighed it,
passed it to his neighbor. It went the round of the company, each man
handling it, each with the talisman between his fingers gazing through
the bars of this present hour at a pageant and phantasmagoria of his own
creating. At last it came to the hand of an old merchant, who held it a
moment or two, looking steadfastly upon it, then slowly put it down.

"Well," said he, "may God send you furthering winds, Sir Mortimer and
Sir John, and make their galleons and galliasses, their caravels and
carracks, as bowed corn before you! Those of your company who are to
die, may they die cleanly, and those who are to live, live nobly, and
may not one of you fall into the hands of the Holy Office."

"Amen to that, Master Hudson," quoth Arden.

"The Holy Office!" cried a Banbury man. "I had a cousin, sirs,--an
honest fellow, with whom I had gone bird's-nesting when we were boys
together! He was master of a merchantman--the _Red Lion_--that by foul
treachery was taken by the Spaniards at Cales. The priests put forth
their hands and clutched him, who was ever outspoken, ever held fast to
his own opinion!... To die! that is easy; but when I learned what was
done to him before he was let to die--" The speaker broke off with an