rs of Lancashire. We will have
Mistress Barnevelt a lieutenant in her company."

"My sister Margaret would make a good lieutenant, my Lord," suggested
Jack. "We'll send Aunt Rachel to the front, with a major's commission,
and Clare shall be her adjutant. As for Blanche, she may stand behind
the baggage and screech. She is good for nought else, but she'll do
that right well."

"For shame, lad!" said Sir Thomas, laughing.

"I heard her yesterday, Sir,--the occasion, a spider but half the size
of a pin head."

"What place hast thou for me?" inquired Lady Enville, delicately
applying a scented handkerchief to her fastidious hose.

"My dear Madam!" said Jack, bowing low, "you shall be the trumpeter sent
to give challenge unto the Spanish commandant. If he strike not his
colours in hot haste upon sight of you, then is he no gentleman."

Lady Enville sat fanning herself in smiling complacency, No flattery
could be too transparent to please her.

"I pray your Lordship, is any news come touching Sir Richard Grenville,
and the plantation which he strave to make in the Queen's Highness'
country of Virginia?" asked Sir Thomas.

Barbara listened again with interest. Sir Richard Grenville was a
Devonshire knight, and a kinsman of Sir Arthur Basset.

"Ay,--Roanoke, he called it, after the Indian name. Why, it did well
but for a time, and then went to wrack. But I do hear that he purposeth
for to go forth yet again, trusting this time to speed better."

"What good in making plantations in Virginia?" demanded Jack, loftily.
"A wild waste, undwelt in save by savages, and many weeks' voyage from
this country,--what gentleman would ever go to dwell there?"

"May-be," said Lord Strange thoughtfully, "when the husbandmen that
shall go first have made it somewhat less rough, gentlemen may be found
to go and dwell there."

"Why, Jack, lad! This country is not all the world," observed his
father.

"'Tis all of it worth anything, Sir," returned insular Jack.

"Thy broom sweepeth clean, Jack," responded Lord Strange. "What, is
nought worth in France, nor in Holland,--let be the Emperor's dominions,
and Spain, and Italy?"

"They be all foreigners, my Lord. And what better are foreigners than
savages? They be all Papists, to boot."

"Not in Almayne, Jack,--nor in Holland."

"Well, they speak no English," said prejudiced Jack.

"That is a woeful lack," gravely replied Lord Strange. "Specially when
you do consider