the madness of my passion), you know not the heart which you break. Cold Northerns, you little dream how a Spaniard can love. Love? Love? Worship, rather; as I worship you, madam; as I bless the captivity which brought me the sight of you, and the ruin which first made me rich. Is it possible, Saints and Virgin! do my own tears deceive my eyes, or are there tears, too, in those radiant orbs?" "Go, sir!" cried poor Rose, recovering herself suddenly; "and let me never see you more." And, as a last chance for life, she darted out of the room. "Your slave obeys you, madam, and kisses your hands and feet for ever and a day," said the cunning Spaniard, and drawing himself up, walked serenely out of the house; while she, poor fool, peeped after him out of her window upstairs, and her heart sank within her as she watched his jaunty and careless air. How much of that rhapsody of his was honest, how much premeditated, I cannot tell though she, poor child, began to fancy that it was all a set speech, when she found that he had really taken her at her word, and set foot no more within her father's house. So she reproached herself for the cruelest of women; settled, that if he died, she should be his murderess; watched for him to pass at the window, in hopes that he might look up, and then hid herself in terror the moment he appeared round the corner; and so forth, and so forth :-one love-making is very like another, and has been so, I suppose, since that first blessed marriage in Paradise, when Adam and Eve made no love at all, but found it ready-made for them from heaven; and really it is fiddling while Rome is burning, to spend more pages over the sorrows of poor little Rose Salterne, while the destinies of Europe are hanging on the marriage between Elizabeth and Anjou and Sir Humphrey Gilbert is stirring heaven and earth, and Devonshire, of course, as the most important portion of the said earth, to carry out his dormant patent, which will give to England in due time (we are not jesting now) Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Canada, and the Northern States; and to Humphrey Gilbert himself something better than a new world, namely another world, and a crown of glory therein which never fades away. : CHAPTER XI. HOW EUSTACE LEIGH MET THE POPE'S LEGATE. 66 Misguided, rash, intruding fool, farewell! Hamlet. IT is the spring of 1582-3. The grey March skies are curdling hard and high above black mountain peaks. The keen March wind is sweeping harsh and dry across a dreary sheet of bog, still red and yellow with the stains of winter frost. One brown knoll alone breaks the waste, and on it a few leafless wind-clipt oaks stretch their moss-grown arms, like giant hairy spiders, above a desolate pool which crisps and shivers in the biting breeze, while from beside its brink rises a mournful cry, and sweeps down, faint and fitful, amid the howling of the wind. Two Along the brink of the bog, picking their road among crumbling rocks and green spongy springs, a company of English soldiers are pushing fast, clad cap-à-pié in helmet and quilted jerkin, with arquebus on shoulder, and pikes trailing behind them; stern steadfast men, who, two years since, were working the guns at Smerwick fort, and have since then seen many a bloody fray, and shall see more before they die. captains ride before them on shaggy ponies, the taller in armour, stained and rusted with many a storm and fray, the other in brilliant inlaid cuirass and helmet, gaudy sash and plume, and sword hilt glittering with gold, a quaint contrast enough to the meagre garron which carries him and his finery. Beside them, secured by a cord which a pikeman has fastened to his own wrist, trots a bare-legged Irish kerne, whose only clothing is his ragged yellow mantle, and the unkempt "glib" of hair, through which his eyes peer out, right and left, in mingled fear and sullenness. He is the guide of the company, in their hunt after the rebel Baltinglas; and woe to him if he play them false. "A pleasant country, truly, Captain Raleigh," says the dingy officer to the gay one. "I wonder how, having once escaped from it to Whitehall, you have the courage to come back and spoil that gay suit with bog-water and mud." "A very pleasant country, my friend Amyas; what you say in jest, I say in earnest." "Hillo! Our tastes have changed places. I am sick of it already, as you foretold. Would Heaven that I could hear of some adventure Westward-ho! and find these big bones swinging in a hammock once more. Pray what has made you so suddenly in love with bog and rock, that you come back to tramp them with us? I thought you had spied out the nakedness of the land long ago." 66 What is needed This soil, see, is These rocks-who 'Bog and rock? Nakedness of the land? here but prudence and skill, justice and law? fat enough, if men were here to till it. knows what minerals they may hold? I hear of gold and jewels found already in divers parts; and Daniel, my brother Humphrey's German assayer, assures me that these rocks are of the very same kind as those which yield the silver in Peru. Tut, man! if her gracious Majesty would but bestow on me some few square miles of this same wilderness, in seven years' time I would make it blossom like the rose, by God's good help." Humph! I should be more inclined to stay here, then." "So you shall, and be my agent, if you will, to get in my mine-rents and my corn-rents, and my fishery-rents, eh? Could you keep accounts, old knight of the bear's-paw?" 66 "Well enough for such short reckonings as yours would be, on the profit side at least. No, no-I'd sooner carry lime all my days from Cauldy to Bideford, than pass another twelvemonth in the land of Ire, among the children of wrath. There is a curse upon the face of the earth, I believe." "There is no curse upon it, save the old one of man's sin"Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to thee.' But if you root up the thorns and thistles, Amyas, I know no fiend who can prevent your growing wheat instead; and if you till the ground like a man, you plough and harrow away nature's curse, and other fables of the schoolmen beside," added he, in that daring fashion which afterwards obtained for him (and never did good Christian less deserve it) the imputation of Atheism. "It is sword and bullet, I think, that are needed here, before plough and harrow, to clear away some of the curse. Until a few more of these Irish lords are gone where the Desmonds are, there is no peace for Ireland." 66 Humph! not so far wrong, I fear. And yet Irish lords? These very traitors are better English blood than we who hunt them down. When Yeo here slew the Desmond the other day, he no more let out a drop of Irish blood, than if he had slain the Lord Deputy himself.” "His blood be on his own head," said Yeo. "He looked as wild a savage as the worst of them, more shame to him ; and the Ancient here had nigh cut off his arm before he told us who he was: and then, your worship, having a price upon his head, and like to bleed to death too "Enough, enough, good fellow," said Raleigh. "Thou hast done what was given thee to do. Strange, Amyas, is it not? Noble Normans sunk into savages-Hibernis ipsis hiberniores ! Is there some uncivilising venom in the air?” "Some venom, at least, which makes Englishmen traitors. But the Irish themselves are well enough, if their tyrants would let them be. See now, what more faithful liegeman has her Majesty than the Inchiquin, who, they say, is Prince of Themond, and should be king of all Ireland, if every man had his right ?" "Don't talk of rights in the land of wrongs, man. But the Inchiquin knows well that the true Irish Esau has no worse enemy than his supplanter, the Norman Jacob. And yet, Amyas, are even these men worse than we might be, if we had been bred up masters over the bodies and souls of men, in some remote land where law and order had never come? Look at this Desmond, brought up a savage among savages, a Papist among Papists, a despot among slaves; a thousand easy maidens deeming it honour to serve his pleasure, a thousand wild ruffians deeming it piety to fulfil his revenge: and let him that is without sin among us cast the first stone." "Ay," went on Raleigh to himself, as the conversation dropped. "What hadst thou been, Raleigh, hadst thou been that Desmond whose lands thou now desirest? What wilt thou be when thou hast them? Will thy children sink downwards, as these noble barons sank? Will the genius of tyranny and falsehood find soil within thy heart to grow and ripen fruit? What guarantee hast thou for doing better here than those who went before thee? And yet cannot I do justice, and love mercy? Can I not establish plantations, build and sow, and make the desert valleys laugh with corn? Shall I not have my Spenser with me, to fill me with all noble thoughts, and raise my soul to his heroic pitch? Is not this true knighterrantry, to redeem to peace and use, and to the glory of that glorious Queen whom God has given to me, a generous soil and a more generous race? Trustful and tender-hearted they arenone more; and if they be fickle and passionate, will not that very softness of temper, which makes them so easily led to evil, make them as easy to be led towards good? Yes-here, away from courts, among a people who should bless me as their benefactor and deliverer-what golden days might be mine! And yet-is this but another angel's mask from that same cunning fiend Ambition's stage? And will my house be indeed the house of God, the foundations of which are loyalty, and its bulwarks righteousness, and not the house of Fame, whose walls are of the soap-bubble, and its floor a sea of glass mingled with fire? I would be good and great-When will the day come when I shall be content to be good, and yet not great, like this same simple Leigh, toiling on by my side to do his duty, with no more thought for the morrow than the birds of God? Greatness? I have tasted that cup within the last twelve months; do I not know that it is sweet in the mouth, but bitter in the belly? Greatness? And was not Essex great, and John of Austria great, and Desmond great, whose race, but three short years ago, had stood for ages higher than I shall ever hope to climb -castles, and lands, and slaves by thousands, and five hundred gentlemen of his name, who had vowed to forswear God before they forswore him; and well have they kept their vow! And now, dead in a turf-hovel, like a coney in a burrow! Leigh, what noise was that?" "An Irish howl, I fancied it may be only a plover's cry." 66 but it came from off the bog; "Something not quite right, Sir Captain, to my mind," said the Ancient. They have ugly stories here of pucks and banshees, and what not of ghosts. There it was again, wailing just like a woman. They say the banshee cried all night before Desmond was slain." "Perhaps, then, this one may be crying for Baltinglas; for his turn is likely to come next-not that I believe in such old wives' tales." 66 Shamus, my man," said Amyas to the guide, "do you hear that cry in the bog?" The guide put on the most stolid of faces, and answered in broken English: "Shamus hear nought. Perhaps what you call him?— fishing in ta pool." "An otter, he means, and I believe he is right. Stay, no! Did you not hear it then, Shamus? It was a woman's voice." "Shamus is shick in his ears ever since Christmas." "Shamus will go after Desmond if he lies," said Amyas. "Ancient, we had better send a few men to see what it is; |