While waiting at the port I chanced to come across some of the exiles, who, having heard of my devotion to the Protestant cause, brought me to the Duke and to Master Rumbold, who committed these letters to my charge.

This makes it clear how they came into my possession.' 'But not how you and they came into the water,' my father suggested.
'Why, that was but the veriest chance,' the adventurer answered with some little confusion of manner.

'It was the _fortuna belli_, or more properly _pacis_.

I had asked my brothers to put into Portsmouth that I might get rid of these letters, on which they replied in a boorish and unmannerly fashion that they were still waiting for the thousand guineas which represented my share of the venture.

To this I answered with brotherly familiarity that it was a small thing, and should be paid for out of the profits of our enterprise.