e maid by now, I warrant. 'Slid, it seems half a life
that I've been away.

"And you really thought of your poor cousin? Be sure that he, too,
thought of you, and offered up nightly his weak prayers for your safety
(doubtless, not without avail) to those saints, to whom would that
you--"

"Halt there, coz. If they are half as good fellows as you and I take
them for, they'll help me without asking."

"They have helped you, Amyas."

"Maybe; I'd have done as much, I'm sure, for them, if I 'd been in their
place."

"And do you not feel, then, that you owe a debt of gratitude to them;
and, above all, to her, whose intercessions have, I doubt not, availed
for your preservation? Her, the star of the sea, the all-compassionate
guide of the mariner?"

"Humph!" said Amyas. "Here's Frank; let him answer."

And, as he spoke, up came Frank, and after due greetings, sat down
beside them on the ridge.

"I say, brother, here's Eustace trying already to convert me; and
telling me that I owe all my luck to the Blessed Virgin's prayers for
me.

"It may be so," said Frank; "at least you owe it to the prayers of that
most pure and peerless virgin by whose commands you sailed; the sweet
incense of whose orisons has gone up for you daily, and for whose sake
you were preserved from flood and foe, that you might spread the fame
and advance the power of the spotless championess of truth, and right,
and freedom,--Elizabeth, your queen."

Amyas answered this rhapsody, which would have been then both
fashionable and sincere, by a loyal chuckle. Eustace smiled meekly, but
answered somewhat venomously nevertheless--

"I, at least, am certain that I speak the truth, when I call my
patroness a virgin undefiled."

Both the brothers' brows clouded at once. Amyas, as he lay on his back
on the pebbles, said quietly to the gulls over his head--"I wonder what
the Frenchman whose head I cut off at the Azores, thinks by now about
all that."

"Cut off a Frenchman's head?" said Frank.

"Yes, faith; and so fleshed my maiden sword. I'll tell you. It was
in some tavern; I and George Drake had gone in, and there sat this
Frenchman, with his sword on the table, ready for a quarrel (I found
afterwards he was a noted bully), and begins with us loudly enough about
this and that; but, after awhile, by the instigation of the devil, what
does he vent but a dozen slanders against her majesty's honor, one atop
of the other? I was ashamed to hear them, and