y slur in the voice and the
sing-song fall of West England.

"Ah, I remember. Your mother was Cecily Coffyn, from Combas on the Moor
at the back of Lustleigh. A pretty girl--I mind her long ago. I would I
were on the Moor now, where it is always fresh and blowing.... And your
father--the big Frenchman who settled on one of Gawain Champernoun's
manors. I loved his jolly laugh. But Cecily sobered him, for the Coffyns
were always a grave and pious race. Gawain is dead these many years.
Where is your father?

"He died in '82 with Sir Humfrey Gilbert."

Raleigh bowed his head. "He went to God with brother Humfrey! Happy
fate! Happy company! But he left a brave son behind him, and I have lost
mine. Have you a boy, Jasper?"

"But the one. My wife died ten years ago come Martinmas. The child is
with his grandmother on the Moor."

"A promising child?"

"A good lad, so far as I have observed him, and that is not once a
twelvemonth."

"You are a hungry old sea-dog. That was not the Coffyn fashion. Ned was
for ever homesick out of sight of Devon. They worshipped their bleak
acres and their fireside pieties. Ah, but I forget. You are de Laval on
one side, and that is strong blood. There is not much in England to vie
with it. You were great nobles when our Cecils were husbandmen."

He turned on a new tack. "You know that Whitney and Wollaston have
deserted me. They would have had me turn pirate, and when I refused they
sailed off and left me. This morning I saw the last of their topsails.
Did I right?" he asked fiercely.

"In my judgment you did right."

"But why--why?" Raleigh demanded. "I have the commission of the King of
France. What hindered me to use my remnant like hounds to cut off the
stragglers of the Plate Fleet? That way lies much gold, and gold will
buy pardon for all offences. What hindered me, I say?"

"Yourself, Sir Walter."

Raleigh let his head fall back on the couch and smiled bitterly.

"You say truly--myself. 'Tis not a question of morals, mark ye. A better
man than I might turn pirate with a clear conscience. But for Walter
Raleigh it would be black sin. He has walked too brazenly in all
weathers to seek common ports in a storm.... It becomes not the fortune
in which he once lived to go journeys of picory.... And there is another
reason. I have suddenly grown desperate old. I think I can still endure,
but I cannot institute. My action is by and over and my passion has
come."

"You are a sick m