nts?"

"I think not. The woodland folk are loyal, and have a right and proper
hatred of the King of Spain. Let me but lay hands on one man and we
may sleep in our beds without fear."

"And that man?"

"Is the priest, Father Jerome."

Raleigh sat up. "Canst describe him?"

"Ay. He is tall, lean, and yellow, looks a Spaniard, but speaks
English as no foreigner could speak it. He hath money in plenty, and
poor folk and greedy folk often fall a prey to Mammon."

"I have met this Father Jerome, unless I mistake him greatly. He is a
Spaniard without doubt, and came hither first in the train of the
Spanish ambassador in King Harry's reign. He came again with Philip
when he took Queen Mary to wife, and stayed here the whole of that
reign and much of the present. He knows our land and our language as
well as thou or I, and Philip has chosen the fittest leader for his
bold enterprise. Thou hast gotten a dangerous adversary; do not hold
him cheaply, for he obtains a strange power over some men. 'Tis
against his nature to strike openly. He works like a mole, and thou
must find his place of burrowing and trap him. Meantime I commend the
advice of the Queen to thee: lay all suspicious characters by the heels
at once; put rogues to catch rogues, and have a care how thou walkest
in the woods."

Sir Walter arose, but the admiral pressed him to stay and drink a cup
of wine. So the two friends sat on a while longer, talking of old
times in far-away Devon.

Hidden in the bushes on the top of the sandstone cliff that backed
Drake's house was the dark figure of Basil. He wriggled thither at the
moment when Raleigh lifted the garden latch.

Chapter IV.

JOHNNIE MORGAN TAKES A WALK.

At the foot of the hill leading out of Blakeney northwards towards
Newnham stood a many-gabled, substantial farmhouse. A plantation of
oaks backed it, and eastwards the meadows stretched away to the Severn.
The house was in the possession of John Morgan, a verderer[1] of the
forest, and the good folk of the forest and river were proud to point
to him as a "proper figure of a man." "Johnnie," as he was familiarly
styled by his associates, stood a good two inches over six feet, was
straight as a fir and tough as a young oak. He had just turned his
twentieth year, and was as fleet of foot as the stags that he guarded.
Dark-eyed and handsome, light-hearted and jovial, a good singer of a
good song, he was as jolly a companion as on