Macwitty had not time to
tell me that. I was so frightened and bewildered with the dreadful noise
and the strangeness of it all that I could not ask him many questions."
"It was by virtue of this ring," he said, holding up his hand.
"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.
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