From the Admiral to the last ne'er-do-weel of a noble house all sprang to their feet. "God!" said one, under his breath, and another's tankard fell clattering from his shaking hand. Nevil, the calm accustomed state, the iron quiet of his nature quite broken, advanced with agitation. "Mortimer, Mortimer!" he cried, and would have put his arms about his friend, but Ferne stayed him with a gesture and a look that none might understand. Behind him came Robin-a-dale, slipped beneath his outstretched arm, then with head thrown back and wild defiant eyes faced the little throng of adventurers. "He's mad!" he shrilled. "My master's mad! He says strange things—but don't you mind them, gentles.... Oh! Sir John Nevil, don't you mind them—"

"Robin!" said Ferne, and the boy was silent.

Arden pushed forward the huge and heavy chair from the head of the board. "Stand not there before us like the shade of him who was Mortimer Ferne," he cried, his dark face working. "Sit here among us who dearly love you, truest friend and noblest gentleman!—Pour wine for him, one of you!"

Ferne made no motion of acquiescence. He stood against the door which had shut behind him and looked from man to man. "Humphrey Carewe—and you, Gilbert—and you, Giles Arden—why are you here upon the Mere Honour? The Cygnet is your ship." None answering him, his eyes travelled to others of the company. "You, Darrell, and you, Black Will Cotesworth, were of the Phoenix. What do you here?... The water rushes by and the timbers creak and strain. Whither do we go under press of sail?"

Before the intensity of his regard the men shrank back appalled. A moment passed then. "My friend, my friend!" cried Nevil, hoarsely, "you have suffered.... Rest until to-morrow."

The other looked steadfastly upon him. "Why, 'tis so that I have been through the fires of hell. Certain things were told me there—but I have thought that perhaps they were not true. Tell me the truth."

The silence seemed long before with recovered calmness the Admiral spoke. "Take the truth, then, from my lips, and bear it highly. As we had plotted so we did, but that vile toad, that engrained traitor, learning, we know not how, each jot and tittle of our plan and escaping by some secret way, sold us to disaster such as has not been since Fayal in the Azores! For on land we fought to no avail, and by treachery the Spaniards seized the Cygnet, slew the men upon her, and fired her powder-room. Dressed in flame she bore down upon, struck, and sunk the Phoenix.... Now we are the Mere Honour and the Marigold, and we go under press of sail because behind us, whitening the waters that we have left, is the plate-fleet from Cartagena."

"Where is Robert Baldry?" asked Ferne.

"In the hands of Don Luiz de Guardiola—dead or living we know not. He and a hundred men came not forth from the tunal—stayed behind in the snare the Spaniard had set for them."

"Where is Henry Sedley?"

"He died in my arms, Mortimer, thrust through by a pike in that bitter fight upon the plain!" Arden made reply. "I was to tell you that he waited for you in Christ His court."

"Then will he wait for aye," said the man who leaned so heavily against the door. "Or till Christ beckons in Iscariot."

They looked at him, thinking his mind distraught, not wondering that it should be so. He read their thought and smiled, but his eyes that smiled not met Arden's. "Great God!" cried the latter, shrank back against the table and put out a shaking hand.

Slowly Ferne left the support of the wood and straightened his racked frame until he stood erect, a figure yet graceful, yet stately, but pathetic and terrible, bearing as it did deep marks of Spanish hatred. The face was ghastly in its gleaming pallor, in its effect of a beautiful mask fitted to tragedy too utter for aught but stillness. He wore no doublet, and his shirt was torn and stained with blood, but in last and subtlest mockery De Guardiola had restored to him his sword. He drew it now, held the blade across his knee, and with one effort of all his strength broke the steel in twain, then threw the pieces from him, and turned his sunken eyes upon the Admiral. "I beg the shortest shrift that you may give," he said. "It was I who, when they tormented me, told them all. Hang me now, John Nevil, in the starlight."

The Admiral's lips moved, but there came from them no sound, nor was there sound in the cabin of the Mere Honour. Not the Cygnet or the Phoenix were more quiet far away, far below, on the gray levels of the sea. At last a voice—Ambrose Wynch's—broke the silence that had grown too great to bear. "It was Francis Sark," he said, and again monotonously, "It was Francis Sark—it was Francis Sark." Another swore with a great oath, "'Tis as the boy says—they've crazed him with their torments!" Humphrey Carewe, a silent and a dogged man, who wore not his heart upon his sleeve, broke into a passionate cry: "Sir Mortimer Ferne! Sir Mortimer Ferne!"

To them all it seemed that the name broke the spell that was upon them. The name stood for very much. Carewe's outcry called up a cloud of witnesses—the deeds of a man's lifetime—and marshalled them against this monstrous accusation of a sick and whirling hour. "You know not what you say!" spoke Nevil, harshly. "Good and evil are blent in you as in all men, but God used no traitorous or craven stuff in your making! Rest now,—speak to us to-morrow!"



Again he would have advanced, but the man at the door waved him back, smiled once more with his lips alone. "Ah, you all are dear to me! But do you know I prefer your hatred to your love! Give me your hatred and let me go. I am not mad nor do I lie to you.... Before the sunset, when I had borne torment through the day, I bore it no longer. They loosed me and dashed water in my face, and Luiz de Guardiola said over to me the words that I had spoken. Then he went forth and laid his snares.... And so Robert Baldry is lost, he and a hundred men besides? And Spaniards coming down the river took the Cygnet because they knew the word of the night?" A spasm distorted the masklike features, but in a moment it was gone. "I should be a madman," he said, "for once I walked before you with a high head and a proud heart. It seems that I knew not myself.... Now, John Nevil, enact Drake and send me to join Thomas Doughty!"

The Admiral answered not where he stood, covering his eyes with his hand. "But Francis Sark—" began Wynch, in a shaking voice.

"I know naught of Francis Sark," Ferne replied. "As I have said so I did. I ask no other court than this, no further mercy than my present death.... John Nevil, for the sake of all that's dead and gone forever, I pray you to keep me here no longer!"

He staggered as he spoke and put his hand to his head. "Mortimer, Mortimer. Mortimer!" cried the Admiral. "Oh, my God, let this dream pass!"

"Why, the matter needs not God," said Ferne, and laughed. "I am a traitor, am I not? Then do to me what was done to Thomas Doughty. Only hasten, for dead men wait to clutch me, and your looks do sear my very brain."

Again he reeled. With a cry Robin-a-dale sprang towards him. Arden, too, was there in time to support the sinking figure and guide it to the seat he had pushed forward. Some one held wine to the lips.... Slow moments passed, then Sir Mortimer's eyes unclosed. The boy hung over him, and he smiled upon him, smiled with eye and lip. "Ay, ay, ay, Robin," he said, "we'll to the court! And sweep away these rhymes, for the queen of all my songs dwells there, and I shall look into her eyes—and that's better than singing, lad! Ay, I'll wear the violet, and we'll ride beneath the blossoms of the spring.... But there's a will-o'-the-wisp on the marsh out yonder, and here they call it a lost soul—the soul of the traitor Aguirre!"

"Master, master!" cried the boy.

Ferne laughed, touching the young cheek with long, supple fingers. "Fame is a bubble, lad—let me tell thee that! But then it is rainbow-hued and mirrors the sky,—so we'll ride for the bubble, lad! and we'll stoop from the saddle and gather up Love! And when the bubble has vanished and Love is dead there's Honor left!" He leaned forward, seeing and hearing where was neither sound nor sight. There was gayety in his face. To the men who stared upon him it was a fearful thing that he who had lost his battle should wear once more the look which they had seen a thousand times. He raised his hand.

"Do you not hear the drums beat and the trumpets blow—far away, far away? Let me whisper—there's one that comes home in triumph.... Ay, your Grace, 'twas I that took Santo Domingo in Hispaniola, and on the mainland the very rich cities of Puerto Cabello, Santa Marta, La Guayra, Cartagena, Nombre de Dios and San Juan de Ulloa. Manoa I reserve,—'tis a secret city, and all who know a secret must keep it, else.... Robin! Robin, rid me of these babblers. She's coming!—all in white—like blown spray—but she bears no roses. Lilies, lilies!—white samite like her robe—but her eyes are turned away. Let her pass, ye fools! She's the word of the night!" He staggered to his feet, swaying forward, clutching at the empty air as at a man's throat, and again his laugh rang through the cabin. "So you twisted it from me, Spanish dog!—so I raved out my heart as to a woman? Then, Don Sathanas, we'll go home together and all the soldiery of hell shall not unlock our embrace!" He grappled with an invisible foe—bent him backward farther and farther over the brink of the world—went down with him into unplumbed darkness....

They judged not the Captain of the Cygnet for a craven and a traitor, for, day after day and day after day, he lay in the Admiral's cabin, so ill a man that the coasts of Death seemed nearer than those of England, and man's condemnation an idle thing, seeing that so soon he must face another Justiciar. So near at times to that ultimate shore did he drift that those who watched him saw the shadow on his face. When the shadow was deep they waited with held breath; when it somewhat lifted they sorrowed that the tide had brought him back. He was of those changelings from a fortunate land to whom Love clings when Faith has covered her head and turned away. They that in heaviness of heart loved him still grieved that he might not touch the dark shore. Better, far better, to lay hold of it so, to go quietly in the not unhappy fever-dream, wandering of old days, recking naught of the new. So the matter might be adjudged elsewhere, but in this world glozed and softened.

The days went on and still Fate played with him, drew him forward, plucked him back. What fancies he had; what wild excursions he made into dizzy, black, and horror-haunted regions; what aeons he lived beneath the seas that stifled; by what winds he was whirled, through space, past burning orbs that neither warmed nor lighted the all-surrounding night; in what Titanic maze he was lost, lost forever, he and Pain that was his brother from whom he might not part;—the sick brain made a hell and languished in the world it had created! At other times, when the dark coasts were near and the current very swift, pale paradises opened to him where he lay for centuries, nor hot nor cold, neither waking nor sleeping, not in joy and not in sorrow. Then the stopped pendulum swung again, and the dreams came fast and faster. At times his brain turned from its mad clash with gigantic, formless, elemental things to rest in the beaten ways. They that listened heard the adventurer speak, heard the courtier and the poet and the lover, but never once the traitor. Of the fortress of Nueva Cordoba and of what had happened therein, of a Spaniard, noble but in name, of an English knight and leader who had not endured, who, where many a simple soul had stood fast to the end, had redeemed his body with his honor, the man who raved of all things else made no mention. Now with the sugared and fantastic protestation demanded by court fashion and the deep, chivalric loyalty of his type he spoke to the Queen of England, and now he was with Sidney at Penshurst, Platonist, poet, Arcadian. Now he lived over old adventures, old voyages, past battles, wrongs done and wrongs received, unremembered loves and hatreds, and now he walked with Damaris Sedley in the garden of his ancient house of Ferne.

Then at last he came to a land where he lay and watched always a small round of azure wave and sky, lay idly with no need of thought or memory, until after a lifetime of the sapphire round it occurred to him to put forth a wasted hand, touch a sun-embrowned one, and whisper, "Robin!" It was a day later, the ships nearing the Grand Canary, and land birds flying past his circlet of sky and ocean, when, after lying in silence for an hour with a faint frown upon his brow, he at last remembered, and turned his face to the wall.



VIII

In a small withdrawing-room at Whitehall an agreeable young gentleman pensioner, in love with his own voice, which was in truth mellifluous, read aloud to a knot of the Queen's ladies. The room looked upon the park, and the pale autumn sunshine flooding it made the most of rich court raiment, purple hangings, green rushes on the floor, lengths of crimson velvet designed for a notable piece of arras, and kindled into flame the jewels upon white and flying fingers embroidering upon the velvet the history of King David and the wife of Uriah.

"'It is not the color that commendeth a good painter,'" read the gentleman pensioner, "'but the good countenance; nor the cutting that valueth the diamond, but the virtue; nor the gloze of the tongue that tryeth a friend, but the faith,'"

Mistress Damaris Sedley put the needle somewhat slowly through the velvet, her fancy busy with other embroidery, not so much listening to the spoken words as pursuing in her mind a sweet and passionate rhetoric of her own.

"'Of a stranger I can bear much,'" went on the Lydian tones, "'for I know not his manners; of an enemy more, for that all proceedeth of malice; all things of a friend if it be but to try me, nothing if it be to betray me. I am of Scipio's mind, who had rather that Hannibal should eat his heart with salt than that Laelius should grieve it with unkindness; and of the like with Laelius, who chose rather to be slain with the Spaniards than suspected of Scipio.'"

Damaris quite left her work upon Bathsheba's long gold tresses and sat with idle hands, her level gaze upon nothing short of the great highway of the sea and certain ships thereon. Where now was the ship?—off what green island, what strange, rich shore?

On went the gentleman pensioner. "'I can better take a blister of a nettle than a prick of a rose; more willing that a raven should peck out my eyes than a dove. To die of the meat one liketh not is better than to surfeit of that he loveth; and I had rather an enemy should bury me quick than a friend belie me when I am dead.'"

The reader made pause and received his due of soft plaudits. But Damaris dreamed on, the gold thread loose between her fingers. She was the fairest there, and the gentleman was piqued because she looked not at him, but at some fine Arachne web of her own weaving.

"Sweet Mistress Damaris—" he began; and again, "Fair Mistress Damaris—" but Damaris was counting days and heard him not. A lesser beauty left her work upon King David's crown to laugh aloud, with some malice and some envy in her mirth. "Prithee, let her alone! She will dream thus even in the presence. But I have a spell will make her awaken." She leaned forward and called "Dione!" then with renewed laughter sank back into her seat. "Lo! you now—"

The maid of honor, who at her own name stirred not, at the name of a poet's giving had started from her dream with widened eyes and an exquisite blush. The startled face which for one moment she showed her laughing mates was of a beauty so intelligent and divine that, was it so she looked, a many King Davids had found excuse for loving one Bathsheba. Then the inner light which had so informed every feature sought again its shrine, and Mistress Damaris Sedley, who was of a nature admirably poised and a wit most ready, lifted with the latest French shrug the jest from her own shoulders to those of another: "Oh, madam! was it you who spoke? Surely I thought it was your dead starling that you taught to call you by that name—but whose neck you wrung when it called it once too often!"

Having shot her forked shaft and come off victor, she smiled so sweetly upon the gentleman pensioner that for such ample thanks he had been reading still had she not risen, laid her work aside, and with a deep and graceful courtesy to the merry group left the room. When she was gone one sighed, and another laughed, and a third breathed, "O the heavens! to love and be loved like that!"

Damaris threaded the palace ways until she reached the chamber which she shared with a laughter-loving girl from her own countryside. Closed and darkened was the little room, but the maid of honor, moving to the window, drew the hangings and let the sunshine in. From a cabinet she took a book in manuscript, then with it in her hands knelt upon the window-seat and looked out upon the Thames. She did not read what was written upon the leaves; those canzones and sonnets that were her love-letters were known to her by heart, but she liked to feel them in her hands while her gaze went down the river that had borne his ship out to sea. Where was now the ship? Like a white sea-bird her fancy followed it by day and by night, now here, now there, through storm and sunshine. It was of the dignity of her nature that she could look steadfastly upon the vision of it in storm or in battle. There were times when she was sure that it was in danger, when her every breath was a prayer, and there were times, as on this soft autumnal day, when her spirit drowsed in a languor of content, a sweet assurance of all love, all life to come. His words lay beneath her hand and in her heart; she pressed her brow against the glass, and as from a watch-tower looked out upon the earth, a fenced garden, and the sea a sure path and Time a strong ally speeding her lover's approach. For a long time she knelt thus, lapped in happy dreams; then the door opened and in came her chamber-fellow. "Damaris!" she said, and again, "Oh, Damaris, Damaris!"

Damaris arose from the window-seat and laid her love-letters away. "In trouble again, Cecily?" she asked, and her voice was like a caress, for the girl was younger than herself. "I know thy 'Oh, Damaris, Damaris!'" She closed the cabinet, then turning, put her arm around her fellow maid. "What is't, sweeting?"

Cecily slipped to her knees, hiding her face in the other's shimmering skirts. "Thou'rt so dear, so good, and so proud.... As soon as I might I ran hither, for every moment I feared to see thee enter! Thou wouldst have died hadst thou heard it there in the great antechamber, where they crowd and whisper and talk aloud—and some, I know, are glad.... The ships, Damaris—yesternight two of the ships came home."

She spoke incoherently, with sobbing breath, but gradually the form to which she clung had grown rigid in her embrace. "Two of the ships have come home," repeated Damaris. "Which came not home?"

"The Cygnet and the Star."

The maid of honor, unclasping the girl's hands, glided from her reach. "Let me go, good Cis! Why, how stifling is the day!" She put her hand to her ruff, as though to loosen it, but the hand dropped again to her side. The silken coverlet upon the bed was awry; she went to it and laid it smooth with unhurried touch. From a bowl of late flowers crimson petals had fallen upon the table; she gathered them up, and going to the casement, gave them, one by one, to the winds outside.

"Damaris, Damaris, Damaris!" cried the frightened girl.

"Ay, I have heard him call me that," answered the other. "Sometimes Damaris, sometimes Dione. When did he die?"

"Oh, I bring no news of his death!" exclaimed Cecily. "Sir Mortimer Ferne is here—in London."

Damaris, swaying forward, caught at a heavy settle, sank to her knee, and laid her brow against the wood. Cecily, gazing down upon her, saw her cheek glow pure carnation, saw the quivering of the long eyelashes and the happy trembling of the lip. Presently the wave of color fled; she unclosed her eyes, raised her head. "But there was something, was there not, to be borne?... God forgive me, I had forgot that I have a brother!"

Cecily, whose courage was ebbing, began to deal in evasions. "Indeed I know not as to thy brother. I am not sure ... mayhap I did not hear him named.... They said so many things—all might not be true."

Damaris arose from the settle. "I will have thy meaning, Cis. 'They said so many things.'—Who are they'?"

Cecily bit her lip, and dashed away fast-starting tears. "Oh, Damaris, all who have heard—all the court—his friends and thine and his foes. The matter's all abroad. The Queen hath letters from Sir John Nevil—he hath been sent for to the Privy Council—"

"Sir John Nevil hath been sent for?—Why not Sir Mortimer Ferne?... Is he ill? Is he wounded?"

Cecily wrung her hands. "Now I must tell thee.... It is his honor that doth suffer. There is a thing that he did.—He hath confessed, or surely there were no believing ... Damans, they call him traitor.... Ah!"

"Ay, and I'll strike thee again an thou say that again!" cried Damaris.

The younger woman shrank before the angry eyes, the disdain of the smiling lips. Abruptly Damaris moved from the frightened girl. Upon the wall, above a dressing-table, hung a Venetian mirror. The maid of honor looked at her image in the glass, then with flying fingers undid and laid aside her ruff, substituting for it a structure of cobweb lace, between whose filmy walls were displayed her white throat and bosom. Around her throat she clasped three rows of pearls, and also wound with pearls her dark-brown hair. Her eyes were very bright, but there was no color in her face. Delicately, skilfully, she remedied this, until with shining eyes and that false bloom upon her oval cheeks one would have sworn she was as joyous as she was fair.



Cecily, watching her with a beating heart, at last broke silence: "Oh, Damaris, whither are you going?"

Damaris looked over her shoulder. "After a while I will be sorry that I struck thee, Cis.... I am going to talk with men." She clasped a gold chain about her slender waist, dashed scented water upon her hands, glanced at her full and sweeping skirts of green silk shot with silver. "I have broken my fan," she said; "wilt lend me thy great plumed one?" Cecily brought the splendid toy. The maid of honor took it from her; then, with a last glance at the mirror, swept towards the door, but on the threshold turned and came back for one moment to her chamber-fellow. "Forgive me, Cis," she said, and kissed the girl's wet cheek.

The great anteroom had its usual throng of courtiers, those of a day and those whose ghosts might come to haunt the floors that their mortal feet so oft had trodden. Men of note and worth were there, and men of no other significance than that wrought by rich apparel. Here men brought their dearest hopes and fears, and here they came to flaunt a feather or to tell a traveller's tale. It was the place of deferred hopes and the place of poisoned tongues, and the place in which to suck the last sweet drop in an enemy's cup of trembling. It was the haunt of laughter and of fevered wit and of rivalry in all things, and here the heaviest of heart was not unlike to be the lightest of wit. The spirit of party never left its walls, and Ambition was its chamberlain. The envied and the envious walked there, and there hung the sword of Damocles and the invisible balances. Here, in one corner, might lord it one on whom Fortune broadly smiled, while around him buzzed the gilded parasites, and here, ten feet away, his rival felt the knife turn in his heart. To-morrow—to-morrow's old trick of legerdemain! there the knife, here the smiling face, and for the cloud of sycophants mere change of venue. It was a land of air-castles and rainbow gold, a fool's paradise and the garden where grew most thickly the apples of Sodom. In it were caged all greed, all extravagance, all jealousies; hopes, fears, passions that may be born of and destroy the soul of man; and within it also flamed splendid folly and fealty to some fixed star, and courage past disputing, and clear love of God and country. Yonder glass of fashion and mould of form had stood knee-deep in an Irish bog keeping through a winter's night a pack of savages at bay; this jester at a noble's elbow knew when to speak in earnest; and this, a suitor with no present in his hand, so lightly esteemed as scarce to seem an actor in the pageant, might to-night take his pen and give to after-time a priceless gift. Soldiers, idle gallants, gentlemen and officers of the court; men of law and men of affairs; churchmen, poets, foreigners, spendthrifts, gulls, satellites, and kinsmen of great lords; the wise, the foolish, the noble and the base—up and down moved the restless, brilliant throng. Some excitement was toward, for the great room buzzed with talk. The courtiers drew together in groups, and it seemed that a man's name was being bandied to and fro, dark shuttlecock to this painted throng. Damans Sedley, entering the antechamber by a small side door, swam into the ken of a number of eager players gathered around a gentleman of flushed countenance, who, with much swiftness and dexterity, was wreaking old grudges upon the shuttlecock. One of the audience trod upon the player's toe; each courtier bowed until his sword stood out a straight line of steel; the maid of honor curtsied, waved her fan, let her handkerchief fall to the floor. To seize the piece of lawn all entered the lists, for the lady was very beautiful, and of a seductive, fine, and subtle charm; a favorite also of the Queen, who, Narcissus-like, saw only her own beauty, and believed that Sir Mortimer Ferne's veiled divinity was rather to be found on Olympus than upon the plains beneath. In sheer loveliness, with lips like a pomegranate flower, mobile face of clear pallor, and beneath level brows eyes whose color it was hard to guess at and whose depths were past all sounding, Mistress Damaris Sedley held her small head high and went her graceful way, moving as one enchanted over the thorny floor of the court. She had great charm. Once it had been said beneath a royal commissioner's breath that here in this portionless girl was a twin sorceress to the Queen who dwelt at Tutbury.

Sorceress enough, at least, was she to draw to herself speech and thought of this particular group; to make those who were ignorant of her relation to the shuttlecock think less of the treasure of Spain than of the treasure which their eyes beheld, and those who had been his friends, who guessed at whom had been levelled those fair arrows of song, to start full cry (when they had noted that she was merry) upon other matters than lost ships and men. It was not long that she would have it so. "As I entered, sir, I heard you name the Star. That was one of Sir John Nevil's ships. Is there news of his adventure?"

The man to whom she spoke, some mere Hedon of the court, fluttered in the frank sunshine of her look. "Fair gentlewoman," he began, pomander-ball in hand, "had you a venture in that ship? Then the less beauteous Amphitrite hath played highwayman to your wealth. Now if I might, drawing from the storehouse of your smiles inveterate Courage, dub myself your Valor, and so to the rescue—"

"Oh, sir, at once I dismiss you to Amphitrite's court!" cried the lady. "Master Darrell,"—to a dark-browed, saturnine personage,—"tell me less of Amphitrite and more of the truth. The Star—"

He whom she addressed loved not the shuttlecock, thought one woman but falser than another, and made parade of blunt speech. Now a shrug of the shoulder accompanied his answer. "The Star went down months ago, off the Grand Canary, in a storm by night."

"Alack the day!" cried Damaris. "But God, not man, sendeth the storm! Was none saved?"

"All were saved," went on her grim informant; "but well for them had they died with their ship, in the salt sea—Captain Robert Baldry and his men—"

A murmur ran through the group, which now numbered more than one who could have shrewdly guessed to whom this lady had given her love. Some would have stayed Black Darrell, but not the Queen herself could have bidden him on with more imperious gesture than did Damaris. "Saved from the sea—but better they had drowned! You speak in riddles, Master Darrell. Where are Captain Robert Baldry and his men?"

A young man hurriedly approached her from another quarter of the room. Men bowed low as he passed, and the circle about the maid of honor received him with a deference it scarce had shown to Beauty's self.

"Ha, Mistress Damaris!" he cried, with somewhat of a forced gayety, "my sister sends messages to you from Wilton! The day is fair—wilt walk with me in the garden and hear her letter?"

The maid of honor gave him no answer; stood smiling, the plumed fan waving, her eyes fixed upon Black Darrell, who scorned to budge an inch for any court favorite and friend of the shuttlecock's. Damaris repeated her question, and he answered it with relish.

"Betrayed to the Spaniard, madam,—they and many a goodly gentleman and tall fellow beside! If they died, they died with curses on their lips, and if they live, they bide with the Holy Office or in the galleys of Spain."

He who had joined the group interrupted him sternly. "This, sir, is no speech for gentle ears. Madam, beseech you, come with me into the long walk."

The courage of a fighting race looked from the maid of honor's darkening eyes. The small head and slender, aching throat were held with pride, and the hand scarce trembled with which she waved Cecily's plumed fan. "I have a venture in this voyage," she said. "Certes, the value of a pearl necklace, and I will know if I am beggared of it! Moreover, dear Sir Philip, English courage and English tragedy do move me more than all the tangled woes of Arcadia.... Master Darrell, I have hopes of thy being no courtier, thou dost speak so to the point. Again, again,—there were three ships, the Mere Honour, the Marigold, and the Cygnet—"

"They took a great galleon of Spain," said Black Darrell, "very rich,—enough so to have paid your venture a hundred times over, lady, and they stormed a town, and might have taken a great castle, for they landed all their forces, of which Sir John Nevil made admirable disposition. But there was an Achan in the camp, a betrayer high in place, who laid his body and his life in the balance against his honor. The Spanish guns mowed down the English; they fell into pits upon pointed stakes; Spanish horsemen rode them under. Meanwhile the Cygnet, traitorous as its Captain—"

"Traitorous as its Captain?" flamed the maid of honor. "But on, sir, on! Afterwards there will be accounting for so vile a falsehood!"

Another movement and murmur ran through the group, checked by Damaris's raised hand and burning eyes. "On, sir, on!"

Darrell shrugged. "Oh, madam, the loyal Cygnet would have it that that fair cockatrice the galleon was her own! So in flame and thunder they kissed, but now, quiet enough, they lie upon the sea-floor, they and the spilled treasure."

Damaris moistened her lips. "Where are the brave and gallant gentlemen who led this venture? Where is Sir John Nevil? Where is Sir Mortimer Ferne?"

Darrell would have answered blithe enough, but the man who had interfered now pushed the other aside, came close to the maid of honor, and spoke with decision. "Gentlemen, this lady had a brother of much promise who sailed upon the Cygnet.... Ah! you perceive that such converse in her presence is not gentle nor seemly." He took Damaris's hand; it was quite cold. "Sweet lady," he said, in a low voice, "come with me from out this gallimaufry." He bent nearer, so that none but she could hear. "I will tell you all. It fits not with the dignity of your sorrow that you should remain here."

Damaris's bosom rose and fell in a long shuddering sigh. The room that was so large and bright swam before her, appeared to grow narrow, dark, and stifling. A hateful and terrible presence overshadowed her; it was as though she had but to put forth her hand to touch a coffin-lid. She no longer saw the forms about her, scarce felt the pressure of Sidney's hand, knew not, so brave a lady was she, so fixed her habit of the court, that she smiled upon the group she was leaving and swept them a formal curtsy. She found herself in the deserted outer gallery with Sidney,—they were in the recess of a window, and he was speaking. She put her hand to her brow. "Is Henry Sedley dead?" she asked.

He answered her as simply: "Yes, lady, bravely dead—a good knight who rode steadfastly to that noblest Court of which all earthly courts are but flawed copies."

As he spoke he regarded her anxiously, fearing a swoon or a cry, but instead she smiled, looking at him with dazed eyes, and her white hand yet at her forehead. "I am his only sister," she said, "and we have no father nor mother nor brother. We have been much together—all our lives—and we are tender of each other.... Death! I never thought that death could touch him; no, not upon this voyage.—There was one who swore to guard him."

Her companion made no answer, and she stood for a few moments without further word or motion, slowly remembering Darrell's words. Then a slight lifting of her head, a gradual stiffening of her frame; her hand fell, and the expression of her face changed—no speech, but parted lips, and eyes that at once appealed and commanded. She might have been some dark queen of a statelier world awaiting tidings that would make or mar. He was the most chivalric, the best-loved, spirit of his time, and his heart ached that, like his own Amphialus, he must deal so sweet a soul so deadly a blow. Seeing that it must be so, he told quietly and with proper circumstance, not the wild exaggeration and tales of aforethought treason which rumor had caught up and flung into the court, but the story as Sir John Nevil had delivered it to the Privy Council. Even so, it was, inevitably, to this man and this woman, the story of one who had spoken where he should have bitten out his tongue; who, all unwillingly it might be, had yet betrayed his comrades, who had set a slur and a stain upon his order.

"He himself accuseth himself," ended the speaker, with a groan. "Avoweth that, wrung by their hellish torments, he made his honor of no account; prayeth for death."

Damaris stood upright against the mullioned window.

"Where is he?" she asked, and there was that in her voice which a man might not understand. He paused a moment as for consideration, then drew from his doublet a folded paper, gave it to her, and turned aside. The maid of honor, opening it, read:

To Sir Philip Sidney, Greeting:

Doubtless thou hast heard by now of how all mischance and disaster befell the adventure. For myself, who was thy friend, I will show thee in lines of thy own making what men hereafter (and justly) will say of me who am thy friend no longer:

"His death-bed peacock's folly. His winding-sheet is shame. His will, false-seeming wholly. His sole executor blame."

Lo! I have given space enough to a coward's epitaph. Of our friendship of old I will speak no farther than to cry to its fleeing shadow for one last favor—then all's past.

I wish to have speech, alone, with Mistress Damaris Sedley. It must be quickly, for I know not what the Queen's disposition of me may be. For God's sake, Philip Sidney, get me this! I am not yet under arrest—I am hard by the Palace, at the Bell Inn.—You may effect it if you will. God knows you have a silver tongue and she a heart of gold! I trust her to give me speech with her as I trust you to find the way.

Time was, thy friend; time is, thy suppliant only.

MORTIMER FERNE.

O Sidney, Sidney! I am not altogether base!

The maid of honor folded the letter, keeping it, however, in her hand. Her companion, turning towards her, chanced to see her face of sombre horror, of wide, tearless eyes, and would look no more. To themselves the two were modern of the moderns, ranked in the forefront of the present; courtier, statesman, and poet of the day, exquisite maid of honor whose every hour convention governed,—yet the face upon which in one revealing moment he had gazed seemed not less old than the face of Helen—of Medea—of Ariadne; not less old and not less imperishably beautiful. Neither spoke of her idyll turned to a crowder's song. Knowing that there were no words which she could bear, he waited, his mind filled with deep pity, hers with God knows what complexity, what singleness of feeling, until at last a low sound—no intelligible word—came from her throat. The plumed fan dropped the length of its silken cord, and her hands went out for help that should yet be voiceless, assuming everything, expressing nothing. He met her call, as three years later he met, at Zutphen, the agony of envy, the appeal against intolerable thirst, in the eyes of a common soldier.

"No command concerning him has yet been given," he said, gently. "I sent him mask and cloak—he came by yonder way,—met me here.... There were few words.... His humor is that of glancing steel."

"That is as it should be," answered the maid of honor.

Her companion parted the hangings which separated the two from the gallery. "He awaits behind yonder door where stands the boy." Ceremoniously he took her hand and led her to an entrance beside which leaned a slender lad in a ragged blue jerkin and hose. "Robin, you will watch yonder at the great doors. Sweet lady, I stand here, and none shall enter. But remember that the time is short—at any moment the gallery may fill."

"There is no long time needed," said Damans. In her voice there was no anger nor shame nor poignant grief, but she spoke as in a dream, and her face when she turned it towards him was strange once more, like the face of Fatal Love rising clear from the crash of its universe. She had drunk the half of a bitter cup, and the remainder she must drink; but when all was said, she was going, after weary months, to see the face of the man she loved. Philip Sidney lifted the latch of the door, saw her enter, and let it fall behind her.

The room in which she found herself was ruddy with firelight, the flames coloring the marble chimney-piece and causing faint shadows to chase one another across an arras embroidered with a hunting scene. Upon a heavy table were thrown a cloak and mask.

The man who had worn them turned from the window, came forward a few paces, and stood still. Damans put forth her hand, and leaned for strength against the chimney-piece—a beautiful woman in the heart of the glow from the fire. At first she said no word, for she was thinking dully. "If he comes no nearer, it must be true. If he crosses not the shadow on the floor between us, it must be true." At last she asked, in a low voice,

"Is it true?"

In the profound silence that followed she made a step forward out of the red glow towards the bar of shadow. Ferne stayed her with a gesture of his hand.

"Yes, it is true," he said. "It is true, unless, indeed, there be no answer to Pilate's 'What is truth?' For myself, I walk in a whirling world and a darkness shot with fire. Did I do this thing? Yea, verily, I did! Then, seeing that I dwell not in Edmund Spenser's faerie-land nor believe that an enchanter's wand may make white seem black and black seem white, I now see myself nakedly as I am,—a man who knew not himself; a sword, jewel—hilted, with a blade of lath; a gay masker whom, his vizard torn away, the servants thrust forth into the cold! I am my own assassin, forger, abhorred fool!"

He paused, and the embers fell, growing gray in the silence. At last he spoke again, in a changed voice. "Thy brother, lady.... There will not lack those to tell thee that I tripped him with my foot, that I slew him with my dagger. It is not true, and yet I count myself his murderer.... See the shadow at thy feet, the heavy shadow that lies between you and me!... How may I say that I would have given my life for him who was thy brother and my charge, whom for his own sake I loved, when I gave not my life, when I bought my life with his and many another's?... Thou dost well to say no word, but I would that thou didst not press thy hands against thy heart, nor look at me with those eyes. A little longer and I will let thee go, and Sidney's sister will comfort thee and be kind to thee."

"What else?" said Damaris, beneath her breath. "What else? O God! no more!"

Ferne drew from his doublet a knot of soiled ribbon. Again he was speaking, but not with the voice he had used before. "Thy favor.... I have brought it back to thee—but not stainless, not worn in triumph.... There is a fortress and a town that I see sometimes in a dream, and the governor of them both is a nobleman of Spain—Don Luiz de Guardiola, Governor of Nueva Cordoba. He filched from me my honor, but left me life that I might taste death in life. He set me on the river sands that I might call to the ships I had not sunken and to the comrades I had not slain. He gave me back my sword that in the cabin of the Mere Honour, in my leader's presence, I might break the blade in twain. He restored me this when he had ground it beneath his heel!—No, no, I will not have you speak! But was he not a subtle gentleman?... Now, by your leave, I shall burn the ribbon."

He crossed to the great fireplace and threw the length of velvet ribbon into a glowing hollow. It caught and blazed and illuminated his face. Damaris moved also, groping with her hands for the chair beside the table. Finding it, she sank down, outstretched her arms upon the board, and bowed her head upon them. Through the faintness and the leaden horror that weighed her down she heard Ferne's voice, at first yet monotonous and low, at the last an irrepressible cry of passion:

"Now there is no longer troth between us, and all thy days, by summer and by winter, thou mayst listen unabashed to tales of such as I. If I am named to thee, thou needst not blush, for now I have seared away that eve above the river, that morn at Penshurst. And there will be no more singing, and men will soon forget, as thou too—as thou too must forget! I loved; I love; but to thy lips and thy dark, dark eyes, and thy whole sweet self I say farewell.... Farewell!"

She was aware of his step beside her; knew that he had lifted the cloak and mask from the table; thought that but for this all-enfolding heaviness she would speak.... The door opened, and Sidney's voice reached her in a low, peremptory "At once!" A pause that seemed filled with laboring breath, then footsteps passed her; the door closed. Alone, she rose to her feet, stood for a moment with her hands at her temples, then moved with an uncertain step to the fire, where she sank down upon the rushes and tried to warm herself. Something among the ashes drew her attention. In went her hand, and out came a charred end of velvet ribbon.

She sat before the fire for some time, dully conscious of sound and movement in the gallery without, but caring nothing. When at last she arose and left the room all was quiet enough, and she reached her own chamber unmolested. Towards evening Cecily, fluttering in after long hours of attendance, found her in her night-rail, half kneeling beside the bed, half fallen upon the floor.... The Countess of Pembroke was not at court, and there was none besides whom Cecily cared or dared to call; so, terrified, she watched out the night beside a Damaris she had never known.

Philip Sidney's low voice had been urgent, and the man who owed to him a perilous assignation made no tarrying. With his cloak drawn about his face, and his hand busy with the small black mask, he passed swiftly along the gallery towards the door through which he had obtained entrance and where Sidney now waited with an anxious brow. It was too late. Suddenly before him, at the head of a short flight of stairs, the massive leaves of the great doors swung open and halberdiers appeared—beyond them a confused yet stately approach of sound and color and indistinguishable forms. The halberdiers advanced, a double line forming an aisle for the passage of some brilliant throng, and cutting off the door of escape. Ferne looked over his shoulder. From doors now opened at the farther end of the gallery people were entering, were ranging themselves along the walls. There was a glimpse of a crowd without; beyond them, the palace stairs and the silver Thames. A trumpet blew, and the crowd shouted, God save the Queen!

The tide of color rolled through the great inner doors, down to the level of the gallery, and so on towards the river and the waiting barges. It caught upon its crest Philip Sidney, who, striving in vain to make his way back to where Ferne was standing, had received from the latter a most passionate and vehement gesture of dissuasion. On came the bright wave, with menace of discomfiture and shame, towards the man who, surrounded though he was by petty courtiers, citizens, and country knights, could hardly fail of recognition. Impossible now was his disguise, where every hat was off, where a velvet cloak swung from a shoulder was one thing, and a mantle of frieze quite another. He dropped the latter at his feet, crushed the light mask in his hand, and waited.

It was not for long. Down upon him swept the cortege—the heart of the court of a virgin Queen. At once keenly and as in a dream he viewed it. Not less withdrawn was it now than a fairy pageant clear cut against rosy skies and watched by him from the stony bases of inaccessible cliffs—and yet it was familiar, goodly, his old accustomed company. This face—and that—and that! how he startled from it laughter or indifference or vagrant thought. There were low exclamations, a woman's slight scream, pause, confusion, and from the rear an authoritative voice demanding reason for the delay. Past him, staring and murmuring, swept the peacock-tinted vanguard; then, Burleigh on one hand, Leicester on the other, encompassed and followed by the greatest names and the fairest faces of England, herself erect, ablaze with jewels, conscious of her power and at all times ready to wield it, came the daughter of Henry the Eighth.

A noble presence moving in the full lustre of sovereignty, a princess who, despite all womanish faults, was a wise king unto her people, a maiden ruler to whom in that aftermath of chivalry men gave a personal regard, rose-colored and fanciful; the woman not above coquetry, vanity, and double-dealing, the monarch whose hand was heavy upon the council board, whose will perverted law, whose prime wish was the welfare of her people—she drew near to the man to whom she had shown fair promise of settled favor, but to whose story, told by his Admiral and commented upon by those about her, she had that day listened between bursts of her great oaths and with an ominous flashing of jewels upon her hands.

Now her quick glance singled him out from the lesser folk with whom he stood. She colored sharply, took two or three impetuous steps, then, indignant, stayed with her lifted hand the progress of her train. Ferne knelt. In the sudden silence Elizabeth's voice, shaken with anger, made itself heard through half the length of the gallery.

"What make you here? Who has dared to do this—to place this man here?"

"Myself alone, madam," answered quickly the man at her feet. With a motion of his hand he indicated the long cloak beside him. "I had but made entrance into the gallery—I was taken unawares—"

"Hast a knife beneath your cloak?" burst forth the Queen. "I hear that right royally you gave my subjects' lives to the Spaniard. There's a death that would more greatly please those that mastered you!... Answer me!"

"I have no words," said Ferne, in a low voice. As he spoke he raised his head and looked Majesty in the face.

Again Elizabeth colored, and her jewels shook and sparkled. "If not that, what then?" she cried. "God's death! Is't the Spanish fashion to wear disgrace as a favor? Again, sir, what do you here?"

"I came as a ghost might come," answered Ferne. "Thinks not your Grace that the spirits of disgraced and banished men, or men whose fault, mayhap, brought forfeiture of their lives, may strain to make return to that spot where they felt no guilt, where they were greatly happy? As such an one might come and no man see him, hurt or to be hurt of him, so came I, restless, a thing of naught, a shade drawn to look once more upon old ways, old walls, the place where once I freely walked. None brought me; none stayed me, for am I not a ghost? I only grieve that your Grace's clear eyes should have marked this shade of what I was, for most unwittingly I, uncommanded, find myself in your Grace's presence." He bent lower, touched the hem of her magnificent robe, and his voice, which had been quite even and passionless, changed in tone. "For the rest—whether I am yet to hold myself at your Grace's pleasure, or whether you give me sentence now—God save your Majesty and prevent your enemies at home and abroad—God bring downfall and confusion upon the Spaniard and all traitors who abet him—God save Queen Elizabeth!"

There followed a pause, during which could be heard the murmur of the waiting throng and the autumnal rustle of the trees without the gallery. At last:

"Yours was ever an eloquent tongue, Sir Mortimer Ferne," said the Queen, slowly. "Hadst thou known when to hold it, much might have been different.... Thy father served us well, and once we slept at his ancient house of Ferne, rich only in the valor and loyal deeds of its masters, from old times until our own.... What is lost is lost, and other and greater matters clamor for our attention. Go! hold thyself a prisoner, at our pleasure, in thy house of Ferne! If thou art but a shade with other shadows, then seek the company of thy dead father and of other loyal and gallant gentlemen of thy name. Perchance, one and all, they would have blenched had the pinch but been severe enough. I have heard of common men—ay, of thieves and murderers—whose lips the rack could not unlock! It seems that our English knights grow less resolved.... My lords, the sun is declining. If we would take the water to-day, we must make no farther tarrying. Your hand, my Lord of Leicester."

Once more her train put itself into motion. Lords and ladies, lips that smiled and hearts all busy with the next link in Ambition's golden chain, on they swept into the pleasant outer air. The one man of the motley throng of suitors to whom Elizabeth had spoken rose from his knee, picked up his frieze coat, and turned a face that might have gone unrecognized of friend or foe towards the door by which he had entered the gallery.



IX

Giles Arden, having ridden far as required the tale of miles from the tavern of the Triple Tun, came, upon a sunshiny afternoon of early spring, to an oak knoll where one might halt to admire a fair picture of an old house set in old gardens. Old were the trees that shadowed it, and ivy darkened all its walls; without sound a listless beauty breathed beneath the pale blue skies; for all the sunshine and the bourgeoning of the spring, the picture seemed but sombrely rich, but sadly sweet. To the lips of a light-of-heart there was that in its quality had brought a sigh: as for Arden, when he had checked his horse he looked upon the scene with a groan, then presently for very mirthlessness, laughed.

"That day," he said to himself with a grimace—"that day when we forsook our hawking, and dismounting on this knoll, planned for him his new house! There should be the front, there the tower, there the great room where the Queen should lie when she made progress through these ways! All to be built when, like a tiercel-gentle to his wrist, came more fame, more gold!"

The speaker turned in his saddle and looked about him with a rueful smile.

"I on yonder mossy stone, and Sidney, chin in hand, full length beneath that oak, and he standing there, his arm about the neck of his gray! And what says monsieur the traitor? 'I like it well as it stands, nor will I tear down what my forefathers built. Plain honor and plain truth are the walls thereof, and encompassed by them, the Queen's Grace may lie down with pride.' Brave words, traitor! Gulls, gulls (saith the world), friend Sidney! For a modicum of thy judgment, Solomon, King of Jewry, I would give (an he would bestow it upon me) my cousin the Earl's great ruby!"

He laughed again, then sighed, and gathering up his reins, left the little eminence and trotted on through sun and shade to a vacant, ruinous lodge and a twilit avenue, silent and sad beneath the heavy interlacing of leafy boughs. Closing the vista rose a squat doorway, ivy-hung; and tumbled upon the grass beside it, attacking now a great book and now a russet pippin, lay a lad in a blue jerkin.

At the sound of the horse's hoofs the reader marked his page with his apple, and with a single movement of his lithe body was on his feet, a-stare to see a visitor where for many days visitors had been none. Declining autumn and snowy winter and greening spring, he could count upon the fingers of one hand the number of those who had come that way where once there had been gay travelling beneath the locked elms. Another moment and he was at Arden's side, clinging to that gentleman's jack-boot, raising to his hard-favored but not unkindly countenance a face aflame with relief and eagerness. Presently came the big tears to his eyes, he swallowed hard, and ended by burying his head in the folds of the visitor's riding-cloak.

"Where is your master, Robin-a-dale?" Arden demanded.

The boy, now red and shamefaced because of his wet lashes, stood up, and squaring himself, looked before him with winking eyes, nor would answer until he could speak without a quaver. Then: "He sits in the north chamber, Master Arden. This side o' the house the sun shines." Despite his boyish will the tears again filled his eyes. "'Tis May-time now, and there's been none but him above the salt since Lammas-tide. Sir John came and Sir Philip came, but he would not let them stay. 'Tis lonesome now at Ferne House, and old Humphrey and I be all that serve him. Of nights a man is a'most afeard.... I'll fasten your horse, sir, and mayhap you'll have other luck."

Arden dismounted, and presently the two, boy and adventurer, passed into a hall where the latter's spur rang upon the stone flooring, and thence into a long room, cold and shadowy, with the light stealing in through deep windows past screens of fir and yew. Touched by this wan effulgence, beside an oaken table on which was not wine nor dice nor books, a man sat and looked with strained eyes at the irrevocable past.

"Master, master!" cried Robin-a-dale. "Here be company at last. Master!"

Sir Mortimer passed his hand across brow and eyes as though to brush away thick cobwebs. "Is it you, Giles Arden?" he asked. "It was told me, or I dreamed it, that you were in Ireland."

"I was, may God and St. George forgive me!" Arden answered, with determined lightness. "Little to be got and hard in the getting! Even the Muses were not bountiful, for my men and I wellnigh ate Edmund Spenser out of Kilcolman. He sends you greeting, Mortimer; swears he is no jealous poet, and begs you to take up that old scheme which he forsook of King Arthur and his Knights—"

"He is kind," said Ferne, slowly. "I am well fitted to write of old, heroic deeds. Nor is there any doubt that the man-at-arms who hath lost his uses in the struggle of this world should take delight in quiet exile, sating his soul with the pomp of dead centuries."

"Nor he nor I meant offence," began Arden, hastily.

"I know you did not," the other answered. "I have grown churlish of late. Robin! a stirrup-cup for Master Arden!"

A silence followed, then said Arden: "And if I want it not, Mortimer? And if, old memories stirring, I have ridden from London to Ferne House that I might see how thou wert faring?"

"Thou seest," said Ferne.

"I see how bitterly thou art changed."

"Ay, I am changed," answered Sir Mortimer. "Your thought was kindly, and I thank you for it. Once these doors opened wide to all who knocked, but it is not so now. Ride on to the town below the hill, and take your rest in the inn! Your bedfellow may be Iscariot, but if you know him not, and as yet he knows himself but slenderly, you may sleep without dreaming. Ride on!"

"The inn is full," answered Arden, bluntly. "This week the Queen rests in her progress with your neighbor, the Earl, and the town will be crowded with mummers and players, grooms, cutpurses, quacksalvers, and cockatrices, travellers and courtiers whom the north wind hath nipped! 'Sblood, Mortimer, I had rather sleep in this grave old place!"

"With Judas who knows himself at last?" asked Ferne, coldly, without moving from his place. The door opened, and old Humphrey, shuffling across the floor to the table, placed thereon a dish of cakes and a great tankard of sack, then as he turned away cast a backward glance upon his master's face. Arden noted the look, that there was in it fear, overmastering ancient kindness, and withal a curiosity as ignoble as it was keen. Suddenly, as though the fire of that knowledge had leaped to his own heart from that of his host, he knew in every fibre how intolerable was the case of the master of the house, sitting alone in this gloomy chamber, served by this frightened boy, by that old man whose gaze was ever greedy for the quiver of an eyelid, the pressing together of white lips, whose coarse and prying hand ever strayed towards the unhealed sore. He strode to the table and laid hands upon the tankard. "The dust of the road is in my throat," he explained, and drank deep of the wine, then put the tankard down and turned to the figure yet standing in the cold light as in an atmosphere all its own.

"Mortimer Ferne," he said, "I came here as thy aforetime friend. I will not believe that it is my stirrup-cup that I have drunk."

"Ay, your stirrup-cup," answered the other, steadily. "Nowadays I see no company—my aforetime friend."

"That word was ill chosen," began Arden, hastily. "I meant not—"

"I care not what you meant," said Sir Mortimer, and sitting down at the table, shaded his eyes with his hand. "Of all my needs the least is now a friend. Go your ways to the town and be merry there, forgetting this limbo and me, who wander to and fro in its shadows." Suddenly he struck his hand with force against the table and started to his feet, pushing from him with a grating sound the heavy oaken settle. "Go!" he cried. "The players and mummers are there. Go sit upon the stage, and in the middle of the play cry to your neighbors: 'These be no actors! Why, once I knew a man who could so mask it that he deceived himself!' There are quacksalvers who will sell you anything. Go buy some ointment for your eyes will show you the coiled serpent at the bottom of a man's heart! Travellers!—ask them if Prester John can see the canker where the fruit seems fairest. Nipped courtiers! laugh with them at one against whom blow all the winds of hell, blast after blast, driving his soul before them! Ballad-mongers—"

He paused, laughed, then beckoned to him Robin-a-dale. "Sirrah," he said, "Master Arden ever loved a good song. Now sing him the ballad we heard when the devil drove us to town last Wednesday."

"I—I have forgotten it, master," answered the boy, and cowered against the wall.

"You lie!" cried Ferne, and the table shook again beneath his hand. "Did I not exercise you in it until you were perfect? Sing!"

The boy opened his mouth and there came forth a heart-broken sound. His master stamped upon the floor. "Shall I not also torture where I can? Sing, Robin, my man! Fling back your head and sing like the lark in the sky! What! am I fallen so low that my very page flouts me, kicks obedience out-of-doors?"

Robin-a-dale straightened himself and began to sing, with bravado, a fierce red in his cheeks, and his young voice high and clear:

"Now list to me, ladies, and list to me, gentles; I've a story for your ears of a false, false knight, Whom England held in honor, but he treasured Spain so dearly That he sold into her hands his comrades in fight.

"'Twas before a walled city with the palm-trees hanging over; He was Captain of the Cygnet, and it sank before his eyes; The Englishmen ashore, they're taken in the pitfall, Good lack! they toil in galleys or their souls to God arise.

"He sees them in his sleep, the craven and the traitor. The sea it keeps their bones, their bloody ghosts they pass—"

"For God's sake!" cried Arden; and the boy, snatching with despairing haste at the interruption, ceased his singing, and in the heavy silence that followed crept nearer and nearer to his master until he touched a listless hand.

"Ay, Robin," said Ferne, absently, and laid the hand upon his head. "And the bloody ghosts they pass."

Arden spoke with emotion: "All men when their final account is made up may have sights to see that now they dream not of. Thou art both too much and too little what thou wast of old, and thou seest not fairly in these shadows. I know that Philip Sidney and John Nevil have come to Ferne House, and here am I, thy oldest comrade of them all. A sheet of paper close written with record of noble deeds becomes not worthless because of one deep blot."

Ferne, his burst of passion past, arose and moved from table to window, from window to great chimney-piece. There was that in the quiet, almost stealthy regularity of his motions that gave subtle suggestion of days and nights spent in pacing to and fro, to and fro, this deep-windowed room.

At last he spoke, pausing by the fireless hearth: "I say not that it is so, nor that there is not One who may read the writing beneath the blot. But from the time of Cain to the present hour if the blotted sheet be bound with the spotless the book is little esteemed."

"Cain slew his brother wilfully," said Arden.

"That also is told us," answered the other. "Jealousy constrained him, while constancy of soul was lacking unto me. I know not if it was but taken from me for a time, or if, despite all seeming, I never did possess it. I know that the dead are dead, and I know not to what ambuscade I, their leader, sent them.... I fell, not wilfully, but through lack of will. Now, an the Godhead within me be not flown, I will recover myself,—but never what is past and gone, never the dead flowers, never the souls I set loose, never one hour's eternal scar!... Enough of this. Ride on to the inn, for Ferne House keepeth guests no longer. To-morrow, an you choose, come again, and we will say farewell. Why, old school-fellow! thou seest I am sane—no hermit or madman, as the clowns of this region would have me. But will you go?—will you go?"

"It seems that you yourself journey to the town upon occasion," said Arden. "Ride with me now, Mortimer. No country lass more sweet than the air to-day!"

The other shook his head. "Business has taken me there. But now that I have sold this house I at present go no more."

"Sold this house!" echoed Arden, and with a more and more perturbed countenance began to pace the floor. "I did never think to hear of Ferne House fallen to strange hands! Your father—" He paused before a picture set in the panelled wall. "Your father loved it well."

"My father was of pure gold," said Sir Mortimer, "but I, his son, am of iron, or what baser metal there may be. Now I go forth to my kind."

"Oh! in God's name, leave Plato alone!" cried the other. "'Tis not by that pagan's advice that you divest yourself of house and land!"

"I wanted money," said Ferne, dully.

The man whom ancient friendship had brought that way stopped short in his pacing to gaze upon the figure standing in the light of the high window. For what could such an one want money? Courtier, no more forever; patron of letters, friend of wise men, no more forever; soldier and sea-king, comrade and leader of brave men never, never again,—what wanted he so much, what other was his imperative need than this old, quiet house sunk in the shadows of its age-old trees, grave with a certain solemnity, touched upon with tragedy, attuned to a sorrowful patience? For a moment the room and the man who made its core were blurred to Arden's vision. He walked to the window and stood there, twirling his mustachios, finally humming to himself the lines of a song.

"That is Sidney's," said Ferne, quietly. "I hear that he does the Queen noble service.... Well, even in the old times he was ever a length before me!"

"Why do you need money?" demanded the visitor. "What more retired—what better house than this?"

The man who leaned against the chimney-piece turned to gaze at his visitor with that which had not before showed in mien or words. It was wonder, slight and mournful, yet wonder. "Of course you also would think that," he said at last. "Even Robin thinks that the stained blade should rust in its scabbard,—that here I should await my time, training the rose-bushes in my garden, listening to the sere leaves fall, singing of other men's harvests."

The boy cried out: "I don't, I don't! You've promised to take me with you!" and flung himself down upon the pavement, with his head beside his master's knee.

"I have bought me a ship," said Ferne, "together with a crew of beggared mariners and cast soldiers. I think they be all villains and desperate folk, or they would not sail with me. Some that seemed honest have fallen away since they knew the name of their Captain.... We must begone, Robin! If we would not sail the ship ourselves we must begone—we must begone."

"Begone where?" demanded Arden, and wheeled from the window.

"To fight the Spaniard," said Ferne. "The Queen hath been my very good mistress. John Nevil and Sidney have procured me leave to go—if it so be that I go quietly. I think that I will not return—and England will forget me, but Spain may remember.... For the rest, I go to search for Robert Baldry; to seek if not to find my enemy, the foe that I held in contempt, whom in my heart I despised because he was not poet and courtier, as I was, nor knight and gentleman, as I was, nor very wise, as I was, and because all his vision was clouded and gross, while I—I might see the very flower o' the sun.... Well, he was a brave man."

"He is dead," whispered Arden. "Surely he is dead."

"Maybe," answered the other. "But I nor no man else saw him die. And we know that these Spanish tombs do sometimes open and give up the dead. I'll throw for size-ace."

"If he lived they would have sent him to Cartagena,—to the Holy Office!" cried the other. "One ship—a scoundrel crew.... Mortimer, Mortimer, some other ordeal than that!"

Ferne raised his eyes. "I call it by no such fine name," he said. "I but know that if he yet lives, then he and what other Englishmen are left alive do cry out for deliverance, looking towards the sea, thinking, 'Where is now a friend?'" He left the table and came near to Arden. "'Twas a kindly impulse sent you here, old comrade of mine; but now will you go? The dead and I hold Ferne House of nights. To-morrow come again and say good-by."

"I will sail with you to the Indies, Mortimer," said the visitor.

There was silence in the room; then, "No, no," answered Ferne, in a strange voice. "No, no."

Arden persisted, speaking rapidly, carrying it off with sufficient lightness. "He was just home from Ireland and stood in need of the sun. His cousin wanted him not; John Nevil was in the north and had helpers enough. The slaying of Spaniards was at once good service and good sport. Best take him along for old time's sake. Indeed, he asked no better than to go—" On and on he talked, until, looking up, his speech was cut short by the aspect of the man before him.

If in every generation the house of Ferne, father and son, could wear a dark face when occasion warranted, certainly in this moment that of the latest of his race was dark indeed. "And at the first pinch be betrayed. Awake, or here, or there, in the torments of Spain or in another world! Awake and curse me by all your gods! Speak not to me—I am not hungry for a friend! I have no faith to pledge against your trust! The rabble which await me upon my ship, I have bought them with my gold, and they know me, who I am. For Robin—God help the boy! He had a fever, and he would not cease his cries until I sware not to part from him. Robin, Robin! Master Arden will take horse! Go, Arden, go! or as God lives I will strike you where you stand. No,—no hand-touching! Can you not see that you heat the iron past all bearing? A moment since and I could have sworn I saw behind you Henry Sedley! Go, go!"

He sank upon the settle beneath the window, and buried his head in his arms. For a long minute Arden stood with a drawn face, then turning, left the house and left the place, for the knowledge was borne in upon him that here and now friendship could give no aid. When, half an hour later, he arrived at the Blue Swan in the neighboring town and called for aqua-vitae, mine host, jolly and round and given over to facetiousness, swore that to look so white and bewitched-like the gentleman must have gathered mandrakes from Ferne church-yard, or have dined with the traitor knight himself.

That same afternoon, when the rays of the sun were lower, Ferne went into his garden and lifted his bared brow, that perchance the air might cool it. It was the quiet hour when the goal of the sun is in view, and the shadows of the fruit trees lay long upon the grass. There were breaches in the garden walls where they had crumbled into ruin, and through these openings, beyond dark masses of all-covering ivy, sight might be had of old trees set in alleys, of primrose-yellowed downs, and of a distant cliff-head where sheep grazed, while far below gleamed a sapphire line of sea. Tender quiet, fair stillness, marked the spot. Day mused as she was going: Evening, drawing near, held her finger to her lips. A tall flower, keeping fairy guard beside three ruinous steps, moved not her slightest bell, but there came one note of a hidden thrush.

Full in the midst of a grass-plot was set a semi-circular bench of stone. To this Ferne moved, threw himself down, and with a moaning sigh closed his eyes. There had been long days and sleepless nights; there had been, once his brain had ceased to whirl, the growth of a purpose slowly formed, then held like iron; there had been the humble pleading for freedom, the long delay, the hope deferred; then, his petition granted, the going forth to mart and highway, the bargaining, amidst curious traffickers, for that rotting ship, for those lives, as worthless as his own, which yet must have their price. This going forth was very bad; like hot lead within the gaping wound, like searing sunshine upon the naked eye. And now, to-day, not an hour since, Arden! to mock, to goad, to torture—

Slowly, slowly, the sun went down the west, and the peace of the garden deepened. Very stealthily the quiet stole upon him; softly, silently, with spirit touch, it brought him healing simples. Utterly weary as he was, the balm of the hour at last flowed over him, faintly soothing, faintly caressing. He opened his eyes, and breathing deeply, looked about him with a saner vision than he had used of late.

The lily by the broken stair slept on, but the thrush sang once again. The bell-like note died into the charmed stillness, and all things were as they had been. Thirty paces away, stark against the evening sky, rose the western wall of Ferne House, and it was shaggy with ivy that was rooted like a tree, wide-branched, populous with birds' nests, and high, high against the blue a thing of tenderest sprays and palest leaves. The long ridge of them kept the late sunshine, and so far was it lifted above the earth, so still in that dreamy hour, so touched with pale gold, so distant and so delicate against high heaven, that it caught and held eye and soul of the man for whom Fate had borrowed Ixion's wheel. He gazed until the poet in him sighed with pure pleasure; then came forgetfulness; then, presently, he looked into his heart and began to make a little song, amorous, quaint, and honey-sweet, just such a song as in that full dawn of poesy Englishmen struck from the lyre and thought naught of it. His lips did not move; had he spoken, at the sound of his own voice the charm had cracked, the little lyric had shrunk away before tragedy that was yet as fierce as it was profound, that had as yet few other notes than those of primal pain.

With the final cadence, the last sugared word, the ivy sprays somewhat darkened against the eastern sky. His fancy being yet aloft, he turned that he might behold the light upon the downs, and then he saw Damaris Sedley where she stood upon the lowest of the ruined steps, stiller than the flower beside her, and with something rich and strange in her bearing and her dress. Cloth of silver sheathed her body, while the flowing sleeves that half revealed, half hid her white and rounded arms were of silver tissue over watchet blue, and of watchet was the mantle which she had let fall upon the step beside her. A net of wire of gold crossing her hair that was but half confined, held high above her forehead a golden star. In one hand she bore a silvered spear well tipped with gold, the other she pressed above her heart. Her face was pale and grave, her scarlet lip between her teeth, her dark eyes intent upon the man before her.

Ferne sprang to his feet and started forward, very white, his arm outstretched and trembling, crying to her if she were spirit merely. She shook her head, regarding him gravely, her hand yet upon her heart. "I attend the Queen upon her progress," she said. "This day at the Earl's there is a great masque of Dian and her huntresses, satyrs, fauns, all manner of sylvan folk. At last I might steal aside unmissed.... By the favor of a friend I rode here through the quiet lanes, for I wished to see you face to face, to speak to you—to you who gave me no answer when I wrote, and wrote again!... I am weary with the joys of this day. May I rest upon yonder seat?"

He moved backward before her, slowly, across the grass-plot to the bench of stone, and she followed him. Their gaze met the while. There was no wonder in his look, no consciousness of self in hers. In the spaces beyond life their souls might meet thus; each drawing by the veil, each recognizing the other for what it was. They took their seat upon the wide stone bench, with the primroses at their feet, and above them the empurpling arch of the sky. Throughout the past months, when he dreamed of her, when he thought of her, he bowed himself before her, he raised not his eyes to hers. But now their looks met, and his countenance of a haggard and ravaged beauty did not change before her still regard. The floating silver gauze of her open sleeve lying upon the stone between them he lightly, with no pressure that she might notice, let rest his hand upon it. In the act of doing this he wondered at himself, but then he thought, "I am on my way to death...."

She was the first to speak.

"Seven months have gone since that day at Whitehall."

"Ay," he answered, "seven months."

She went on: "I have learned not to reckon life that way. Since that day at Whitehall life has lasted a very long time."

Again he echoed—"A very long time." Then, after a pause: "I have made for you a long, long life. If to have done so is to your irreparable loss, then this, also, is to be forgiven.... Long life! now in the watches of one night I live to be an old man! For you may forgetfulness come at last!"

She turned slightly, looking at him from beneath the gold star. "Wish me no such happy wishes! Let me not think that such wishes dwell in your heart. Since that day at Whitehall I have written to you—written twice. Why did you never answer?"

He looked down upon his clasped hands. "What was there to be said? I thought, 'I have sorely wounded her whom I love, and with my own words I have seared that wound as with white heat of iron. Now God keep me man enough to say no farther word!'"

"I was benumbed that day," she said; "I was frozen. My brother's face came between us.... Oh, my brother!... Since that day I have seen Sir John Nevil—"

"Then a just man told you my story justly," he began, but she interrupted him, her breath coming faster.

"I have also made other inquiry; on my knees, on my face, in the dead of the night when I knew that thou, too, waked, I have asked of God, and of our Lord the Christ who suffered.... I know not if they heard me, there be so many that clamor in their ears...." With a quick movement she arose from the stone seat and began to pace the grass-plot, her hands clasped behind her head, the gold star yet bright in the late, late sunshine. "I would they had answered me distinctly. Perhaps they did.... But be that as it may be I will follow my own heart, I will go my own way—"

He arose and began to walk with her. "And thy heart led thee this way?" he asked in a whisper.

She flashed upon him a look so bright that it was as if high noon had returned to the garden. "Pluck me yonder lily," she said. "It is the first I have smelled this year."

He brought it to her, trembling. "Presently it will close," he said, "never to open again."

"That also is among the things we know not," she answered. "Think you not there is one who revives the souls of men?"

"Ay, I believe it," he answered. They paced again the green to its flowery margin.

"Give me yon spray of love-lies-bleeding," she said; then as it rested against the lily in her hand, "Wounds may be cured," she said. "I have heard talk here, there, at the court even, else, beshrew me, if I had come this way to-day! I know that thou goest forth—" Her voice broke and the gold star shook with the trembling of her frame. "I know that thou mayst never, never, never return. I will pray for thy soul's welfare.... See! there is a heartsease at my feet."

He knelt, but touched not the floweret, instead caught at the long folds of her silver gown and held her where she stood. "For my soul's welfare, thou balm from heaven!" he cried. "For only my soul's welfare?"

"No, no," she answered. "For the welfare of all of thee, soul and body—soul and body!" She bent over him, and there fell from her eyes a bright rain of tears, quickly come, quickly checked. "Ah, a contrary world of queens and guardians!" she cried. "Oh, my God! if thou mightst only make me thy wife before thou goest!"

He arose and drew her into his arms. "The story is true," he whispered, to which she answered:

"I care not! Sayest thou, 'A thing was done.' Say I, 'Thou didst it!' and high above the deed I love thee!"

Suddenly she fell into a storm of weeping, then broke from him, and somewhat blindly sought the garden seat, sank down upon it, and buried her face in her arms. He kneeled beside her, and presently she was crouching against his breast, that rose and fell with his answering emotion. She put up her hand and touched the deep lines of past suffering in the face above her.

"I know that thou must go," she said. "I would not have thee stay. But, Mortimer, if it were possible ... He forgave you long, long ago, for he loved you above all men. I, his sister, answer for him. Ah, God wot! brother and sister we have loved you well.... If I could keep tryst, after all, if thou couldst make me thy wife before thou goest—or if kindred and the Queen be too powerful, I could escape, could follow thee as thy page, trusting thy honor ... Ah, look not so upon me! Ah, to be a woman and do one's own wooing! Ah, think what thou wilt of me, only know that I love thee to the uttermost!"



Ferne left her side, and moving to the garden wall, looked out over the far-away downs to the far-away sea—the sea that, for weary months had called and-thundered in his ears. Now he saw it all halcyon, stretching fair and mute to the boundless west, the sinking sun, the lovers' star. They two—could they two, lying with closed eyes, but drift out over bar, floating away through golds and purples towards the kiss of heaven and sea—flotsam of this earth, jetsam of age-distant shores, each to the other paradise and all in all! How profound the stillness—how deep the fragrance of the lily—what indifference, what quiet as of scorn did the Maker of man, having placed his creature in the lists, turn aside to other spectacles!... Should man be more careful than his God? Right! Wrong!—to die at last and find them indeed words of a length and the prize of sore striving a fool's bauble:—to die and miss the rose and wine cup!—to die and find not the struggle and the star!—to loose the glorious bird in the hand and beyond the portals to feel no fanning of a vaster wing! What use—what use—to be at once the fleeing Adam and the dark archangel at Eden's gates?

He turned to behold the woman whom now, with no trace of the fancifulness, the idealism of his time, he loved with all depth, passion, actuality; he set wrist to teeth and bit the flesh until blood started; he moved towards her where she sat with her hands clasped above her knee, her head thrown back, watching his coming with those deep eyes of hers. He reached her side; she rose to meet him, and the two stood embraced in the flattering sunshine, the odor of the lilies, the pale glory of the failing day.

"My dear love, it is not possible," he said. "Flower of women! didst dream that I would leave thee here blasted by my name, or that I would carry thee where I must go? Star of my earth, to-day we say a clean farewell!"

"Then God be with thee," she said, brokenly.

"And with thee!" he answered. Hand in hand they moved to the broken wall, and leaning upon it, looked out to that far line of sea. Her under-sleeve of silver gauze fell away from her arm.

"How white is thy arm!" he breathed. "How branched with tender blue!"

"Wilt kiss it?" she answered, "so I shall grow to love myself."

"Thou art the fairest thing the sun shines on," he said. "Thy lips are like flowers I have never seen in the West."

"Gather the flowers," she said, and raised her face to his. "The garden is kept for thee."

The sun began to decline, the earth to darken, swallows circled past. "It grows late," she said, "late, late! When goest thou?"

"Within the week."

"By then her Grace will have whirled me leagues away.... I would I were a queen. If thou goest to death—oh God! we'll not speak of that!—Give me that chain of thine."

He unclasped it, laid it in her hands. Raising her arms, she drew it over her neck.

"Seest thou thy prisoner?" she asked. "Forever thy prisoner!" From its fellow of watchet blue she detached her floating silver sleeve. "It is my favor," she whispered. "Wear it when thou wilt."

He folded the gauze and thrust it within his doublet. "When I may, my lady," he said, with his eyes upon the sunset that held the colors of the dawning. "When I may."

A sickle moon swung in the gold harvest-fields of the west, then a great star came out to watch that reaping. The thrush was silent now, but from a covert rushed suddenly the full tide of a nightingale's song. With a cry the maid of honor put hands to her ears. "Ay me, my heart it will break! Tell me that thou goest but to come again!"

He took her hands, pressing them to his heart, to his lips. "No, no, my dearest dear, since God no longer worketh miracles! I go more surely than ever went John Oxenham; I would not have thee cheat thyself, spend thy days in watching, listening. I kiss thee a lifetime good-by.... Oh child, seest thou how broken I am? I that myself loosed all the winds—I that kneel, a penitent, before the just and the unjust, before my lover and my foe! But when all's said, all's done, all's quiet:—the arrow sped, the stone fallen, the curfew rung, the dust returned to dust! then shall stand my soul.... A ruined man, a man in just disgrace, who hath played the coward, who hath sinned against thee and against others, that am I—yet our souls endure, and thou art my mate; queenly as thou standest here, thou art my mate! I love thee, and in life, in death, I claim thee still: Forget me not when I am gone!"

"When thou art gone!" she cried. "When thou art gone with all my mind I'll hold myself thy bride! In those strange countries beneath the sun if bitterness comes over thee"—she put her hand to her heart—"think of thy fireside here. Think, 'Even in this wavering life I have an abiding home, a heart that's true, true, true to me!' When thou diest—if thou diest first—linger for me; where a thousand years are as a day travel not so far that I may not overtake thee. Mortimer, Mortimer, Mortimer! I'll not believe in a God who at the last says not to me, 'That path he took.' When He says it, listen for my flying feet. Oh, my dear, listen for my flying feet!"

"Star and rose!" he said. "If we dream, we dream. Better so, even though we pass to sleep too deep for dreaming. For we plan a temple though we build it not.... That falconer's whistle! is it thy signal? Then thou must make no tarrying here. I will put thy cloak about thee."

He brought from the ruinous steps her watchet mantle, and she let him clasp it about her throat. In the raised air of that isolate peak where true lovers take farewell there are few words used at the last. Sighs, kisses, broken utterance,—"Forever," ... "Forever," ... "I love thee," ... "I love thee"; the eternal "I will come"; the eternal "I will wait"! Possessors of an instant of time, of an atom of space, they sent their linked hopes, their mailed certainties forth to the unseen, untrenched fields of the future, and held their love coeval with existence. Then, slowly, she withdrew herself from his clasp, and as slowly moved backward to the broken stair. He waited by the stone seat, for she must go secretly and in silence, and he might not, as in old times, lead her with stateliness through the ways of Ferne House. Upon the uppermost step she paused a moment, and he, lifting his eyes, saw above him her mantled figure, her outstretched arms with the lily of her body in between, the gold star swimming above her forehead. One breathless moment thus, then she turned, and folding her mantle about her, passed from her lover's sight towards the darkening orchard.

He stayed an hour in the garden, then went back to his great, old, dimly lighted hall. Here, half the night, chin in one hand, the other hanging below his booted knee, he brooded over the now glowing, now ashen chimney logs; yet Robin-a-dale, who believed in Master Arden, and very mightily in visions as beautiful as that which had been vouchsafed to him going through the orchard that eventide, felt as light a heart as if no shadowy ship awaited in the little port down by the little town, whose people either cursed or looked askance. Waking in the middle of the night, he thought he saw a knight at prayer—one of the old stone Templars from Ferne church, where they lay with palm to palm, awaiting with frozen patience the last trumpet-call that ever they should hear. This knight, however, was kneeling with bowed head and hidden face, a thing against all rule with those other stark and sternly waiting forms. So Robin, being too drowsy to reason, let the matter alone and went to sleep again.



X

The Sea Wraith, an ancient ship, gray and patched of sail, battered and worn with a name for all disaster, sailed the Spanish seas as though she bore a charmed life—and her crew that was the refuse of land and sea, used to license, to whom mutiny was no uglier a word than another, kept the terms of an iron discipline—and her Captain waked and slept as one aware of when to wake and when to sleep.

There was fever between the decks; there was fever in black hearts; of dark nights a corposant burned now at this masthead, now at that. Mariner and soldier knew the story of the shadowy figure keeping company with the stars there above them on the poop-royal. Did he keep company only with the stars and with the boy, his familiar? The sick, tossing from side to side, raved out curses, and the well saw many omens. Dissatisfaction, never far from their unstayed minds, crept at times very near, and superstition sat always amongst them. But they reckoned with a Captain stronger for this voyage than had been Francis Drake or John Hawkins, and stranger than any under whom they had ever sailed. He was so still a man that they knew not how to take him, but beneath his eyes vain imaginings and half-formed conspiracies withered like burnt paper. He called upon neither God nor devil, but his voice blew like an icy wind upon the heat of disloyal intents, and like the white fire that touched now stem, now stern, so his will held the ship, driving it like a leaf towards the mainland and the fortress of Nueva Cordoba.

The ship that seemed so aged and disgraced yet had a strength of sinew which made her formidable. All things had been patiently cared for by the man who, selling his patrimony, had labored against wind and tide to the end that he might carry forth with him such an armament as scarce had been the Cygnet's own. Tier on tier rose the Sea Wraith's ordnance; she carried warlike stores of all sorts that might serve for battle by sea or land. If his money could not buy such men as stood ready to ship with Drake and Hawkins, yet in his wild, sin-stained crew he had purchased experience, the maddest bravery, and a lust of Spanish gold that might not be easily sated. The qualities of a captain over men he himself supplied.

In his confidence neither before nor after their sailing, yet the two hundred men of the Sea Wraith guessed well his destination, but for themselves preferred the island towns—Santiago and Santo Domingo in Hispaniola. There were wealth and wine and women, there the fringing islets where booty might be hidden, and there the deep caves where foregathered many small craft misnamed piratical. "Lord! the Sea Wraith would soon make herself Admiral of that brood, leading them forth from those hidden places to pounce upon Santo Domingo, that was the seat of government and as wealthy a place as any in the Indies!—the Sea Wraith and her Captain, that was a good Captain and a tall!—ay, ay, that would they maintain despite all land talk—a good Captain and a tall, 'spite of Dick Carpenter's dream—"