en
he found it earnest. For Frank looked forward to asking the queen's
permission for his voyage with the most abject despondency and terror.
Two or three days passed before he could make up his mind to ask for
an interview with her; and he spent the time in making as much interest
with Leicester, Hatton, and Sidney, as if he were about to sue for a
reprieve from the scaffold.

So said Amyas, remarking, further, that the queen could not cut his head
off for wanting to go to sea.

"But what axe so sharp as her frown?" said Frank in most lugubrious
tone.

Amyas began to whistle in a very rude way.

"Ah, my brother, you cannot comprehend the pain of parting from her."

"No, I can't. I would die for the least hair of her royal head, God
bless it! but I could live very well from now till Doomsday without ever
setting eyes on the said head."

"Plato's Troglodytes regretted not that sunlight which they had never
beheld."

Amyas, not understanding this recondite conceit, made no answer to it,
and there the matter ended for the time. But at last Frank obtained his
audience; and after a couple of hours' absence returned quite pale and
exhausted.

"Thank Heaven, it is over! She was very angry at first--what else could
she be?--and upbraided me with having set my love so low. I could only
answer, that my fatal fault was committed before the sight of her had
taught me what was supremely lovely, and only worthy of admiration. Then
she accused me of disloyalty in having taken an oath which bound me to
the service of another than her. I confessed my sin with tears, and when
she threatened punishment, pleaded that the offence had avenged itself
heavily already,--for what worse punishment than exile from the sunlight
of her presence, into the outer darkness which reigns where she is not?
Then she was pleased to ask me, how I could dare, as her sworn servant,
to desert her side in such dangerous times as these; and asked me how I
should reconcile it to my conscience, if on my return I found her dead
by the assassin's knife? At which most pathetic demand I could only
throw myself at once on my own knees and her mercy, and so awaited
my sentence. Whereon, with that angelic pity which alone makes her
awfulness endurable, she turned to Hatton and asked, 'What say you,
Mouton? Is he humbled sufficiently?' and so dismissed me."

"Heigh-ho!" yawned Amyas;

"If the bridge had been stronger,
My tale had been longer."

"Am