lmet and quilted jerkin, with arquebus on shoulder,
and pikes trailing behind them; stern steadfast men, who, two years
since, were working the guns at Smerwick fort, and have since then seen
many a bloody fray, and shall see more before they die. Two captains
ride before them on shaggy ponies, the taller in armor, stained and
rusted with many a storm and fray, the other in brilliant inlaid cuirass
and helmet, gaudy sash and plume, and sword hilt glittering with gold,
a quaint contrast enough to the meager garron which carries him and his
finery. Beside them, secured by a cord which a pikeman has fastened to
his own wrist, trots a bare-legged Irish kerne, whose only clothing is
his ragged yellow mantle, and the unkempt "glib" of hair, through which
his eyes peer out, right and left, in mingled fear and sullenness. He is
the guide of the company, in their hunt after the rebel Baltinglas; and
woe to him if he play them false.

"A pleasant country, truly, Captain Raleigh," says the dingy officer to
the gay one. "I wonder how, having once escaped from it to Whitehall,
you have the courage to come back and spoil that gay suit with bog-water
and mud."

"A very pleasant country, my friend Amyas; what you say in jest, I say
in earnest."

"Hillo! Our tastes have changed places. I am sick of it already, as you
foretold. Would Heaven that I could hear of some adventure Westward-ho!
and find these big bones swinging in a hammock once more. Pray what has
made you so suddenly in love with bog and rock, that you come back to
tramp them with us? I thought you had spied out the nakedness of the
land long ago."

"Bog and rock? Nakedness of the land? What is needed here but prudence
and skill, justice and law? This soil, see, is fat enough, if men were
here to till it. These rocks--who knows what minerals they may hold? I
hear of gold and jewels found already in divers parts; and Daniel, my
brother Humphrey's German assayer, assures me that these rocks are of
the very same kind as those which yield the silver in Peru. Tut, man!
if her gracious majesty would but bestow on me some few square miles of
this same wilderness, in seven years' time I would make it blossom like
the rose, by God's good help."

"Humph! I should be more inclined to stay here, then."

"So you shall, and be my agent, if you will, to get in my mine-rents and
my corn-rents, and my fishery-rents, eh? Could you keep accounts, old
knight of the bear's-paw?"

"Well