uld let you go.
But when do you intend to ask them, lad?"

"I am in Plymouth until the morrow after next," said Roger; "and then I
intend to take my boat, which I have left at Sutton Pool, and pull up
the river back to Pentillie; and you will come with me, Harry, will you
not?"

"Ay, lad, that will I; have I not promised you?" replied the latter.
"But I must now go about my business, else shall I not be in time to
accompany you according to my promise. So until the appointed time,
when I will certainly meet you, farewell, lad! and have a care that that
hare-brain of yours does not get you into some trouble, meanwhile; for I
know what you are when you come into Plymouth on a holiday."

"Never fear for me, Harry," returned Roger; "I have now something in
view of more importance than street brawls and such follies, and shall
take care that I get into no trouble to prevent my joining you at Sutton
Pool, as we agreed."

With these words the two lads separated, Harry returning to his home to
break the momentous news to his sister, and elicit her views concerning
the proposed expedition, and Roger proceeding to the house of his uncle,
a worthy mercer of the town, with whom he was staying during the holiday
which he was at that time taking in Plymouth. Little did those two boys
(for they were scarcely more) realise the momentous nature of the step
that they had taken when they pledged one another on Plymouth Hoe!
Could they but have foreseen the wild and terrible days, the awful
sights, the hardships and privations, which lay before them, and through
which they would have to pass ere they might return to their native
country, it is highly probable that they would not have started on their
expedition at all. Or, if they had done so, it would have been with far
heavier hearts and more serious faces than they carried at the time when
they made their compact to stand by one another "through fair and foul,
through thick and thin", as they phrased it, that morning on Plymouth
Hoe.

CHAPTER TWO.

HOW THEY LEFT PLYMOUTH AT DAWN ON THE TWENTY-FIRST DAY OF JULY, 1586.

At the time appointed the two friends met as agreed, and, taking the
small boat belonging to Roger, which he had left at the boat-stairs in
Sutton Pool, they pulled up the river Tamar, arriving in due course at
Roger's home, Pentillie Manor--or Castle, as it was called by the
country-folk round about.

Harry, as Roger's best and dearest friend, was always