e Queen was very gracious to her pretty subject
from the west, and praised her beauty openly. Yet, in spite of the
royal condescension, Dolly felt terribly afraid, and owned to Raleigh
that she was very glad to get outside the palace doors again.

On another day the knight took them to the play on the other side of
the river, where they saw a comedy of Ben Jonson's. After the play the
captain went to see the bear-baiting in the bear-pit hard by, but the
two young people preferred a trip on the river as far as Chelsea. This
was a very busy and momentous day, for in the evening Master Jeffreys
took Morgan down to the "Mermaid Tavern" between Wood Street and Milk
Street, where Raleigh was presiding over a gathering of the "Mermaid
Club," and there the young countryman found himself in a very nest of
poets--Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe, Sidney, and Raleigh himself. In
after years he hardly knew which to call the most notable moment in his
life--the one when he kissed his Queen's hand, or the one when he drank
a cup of sack with the greatest wits and geniuses of his age.

When the Severn-side folks went westwards again, Paignton Rob
accompanied them; for Johnnie had invited the mariner to make his home
with him during the winter, purposing in the spring to go with him on a
first voyage to the New World.

Chapter XXIV.

TWO CHANCE WAYFARERS.

It was the feast of St. Thomas, the sky gray blue, with a pale,
cold-looking sun, the Queen's highway frozen into an iron hardness, and
the pools and ditches frost-bound. The wind had shaken the hoar from
the trees and hedges, and the holly-berries stood out in brilliant
bunches against the dark green of the encircling leaves. Along the
road between Bristol and Gloucester, and, but for the wintry haze that
narrowed the horizon, within sight of the latter city, trudged a burly
fellow, staff in hand and a sea song on his lips. His thick shoon
awoke echoes from hedge to hedge, and his iron-shod staff rang in
unison. Hosen of warm, gray homespun covered his legs, and he had a
doublet of the same goodly stuff; a cap, trimmed with otter-skin, was
pulled down tightly over his ears, and an ample cloak of somewhat gaudy
blue flapped in the keen wind; rime, and tiny beads of frozen vapour,
hung like pearls in his black beard. He rolled in his walk as a sailor
should, and sometimes he whistled the air of his song by way of change
from the singing of the words.

"Then ho! for