umfrey.
"Men say in London that Sir Ralf Sadler is even now setting forth to
take charge of her, and send my Lord to London."

"We have had such hopes too often, my son," said Richard. "Nay, she
hath left us more than once, but always to fall back upon Sheffield
like a weight to the ground. But she is full of hope in her son, now
that he is come of age, and hath put to death her great foe, the Earl
of Morton."

"The poor lady might as well put her faith in--in a jelly-fish," said
Humfrey, falling on a comparison perfectly appreciated by the old
sailor.

"Heh? She will get naught but stings. How knowest thou?"

"Why, do none know here that King James is in the hands of him they
call the Master of Gray?"

"Queen Mary puts in him her chief hope."

"Then she hath indeed grasped a jelly-fish. Know you not, father,
those proud and gay ones, with rose-coloured bladders and long blue
beards--blue as the azure of a herald's coat?"

"Ay, marry I do. I remember when I was a lad, in my first voyage,
laying hold on one. I warrant you I danced about till I was nearly
overboard, and my arm was as big as two for three days later. Is the
fellow of that sort? The false Scot."

"Look you, father, I met in London that same Johnstone who was one of
this lady's gentlemen at one time. You remember him. He breakfasted
at Bridgefield once or twice ere the watch became more strict."

"Yea, I remember him. He was an honest fellow for a Scot."

"When he made out that I was the little lad he remembered, he was very
courteous, and desired his commendations to you and to my mother. He
had been in Scotland, and had come south in the train of this rogue,
Gray. I took him to see the old Pelican, and we had a breakfast aboard
there. He asked much after his poor Queen, whom he loves as much as
ever, and when he saw I was a man he could trust, your true son, he
said that he saw less hope for her than ever in Scotland--her friends
have been slain or exiled, and the young generation that has grown up
have learned to dread her like an incarnation of the scarlet one of
Babylon. Their preachers would hail her as Satan loosed on them, and
the nobles dread nothing so much as being made to disgorge the lands of
the Crown and the Church, on which they are battening. As to her son,
he was fain enough to break forth from one set of tutors, and the
messages of France and Spain tickled his fancy--but he is nought. He
is crammed with schol