s found upon your
person when our officers in Jersey made search of you. Which is
yourself--Michel de la Foret, soldier, or a priest of France?"

De la Foret replied gravely that he was a soldier, and that the priestly
dress had been but a disguise.

"In which papist attire, methinks, Michel de la Foret, soldier and
Huguenot, must have been ill at ease--the eagle with the vulture's wing.
What say you, Monsieur?"

"That vulture's wing hath carried me to a safe dove-cote, your gracious
Majesty," he answered, with a low obeisance.

"I'm none so sure of that, Monsieur," was Elizabeth's answer, and she
glanced quizzically at Leicester, who made a gesture of annoyance.
"Our cousin France makes you to us a dark intriguer and conspirator, a
dangerous weed in our good garden of England, a 'troublous, treacherous
violence'--such are you called, Monsieur."

"I am in your high Majesty's power," he answered, "to do with me as it
seemeth best. If your Majesty wills it that I be returned to France,
I pray you set me upon its coast as I came from it, a fugitive. Thence
will I try to find my way to the army and the poor stricken people of
whom I was. I pray for that only, and not to be given to the red hand of
the Medici."

"Red hand--by my faith, but you are bold, Monsieur!"

Leicester tapped his foot upon the floor impatiently, then caught the
Queen's eye, and gave her a meaning look.

De la Foret saw the look and knew his enemy, but he did not quail. "Bold
only by your high Majesty's faith, indeed," he answered the Queen, with
harmless guile.

Elizabeth smiled. She loved such flattering speech from a strong man.
It touched a chord in her deeper than that under Leicester's finger.
Leicester's impatience only made her more self-willed on the instant.

"You speak with the trumpet note, Monsieur," she said to De la Foret.
"We will prove you. You shall have a company in my Lord Leicester's army
here, and we will send you upon some service worthy of your fame."

"I crave your Majesty's pardon, but I cannot do it," was De la Foret's
instant reply. "I have sworn that I will lift my sword in one cause
only, and to that I must stand. And more--the widow of my dead chief,
Gabriel de Montgomery, is set down in this land unsheltered and alone.
I have sworn to one who loves her, and for my dead chief's sake, that
I will serve her and be near her until better days be come and she may
return in quietness to France. In exile we few stric