nd laughed mercilessly.

'But let me tell you, Mus' Robin,'he pleaded.

'I've heard the tale. Tell the children here. Look, Dan! Look,
Una!'---Puck's straight brown finger levelled like an arrow. 'There's
the only man that ever tried to poison Sir Francis Drake!'

'Oh, Mus' Robin! 'Tidn't fair. You've the 'vantage of us all in your
upbringin's by hundreds o' years. Stands to nature you know all the
tales against every one.'

He turned his soft eyes so helplessly on Una that she cried, 'Stop
ragging him, Puck! You know he didn't really.'

'I do. But why are you so sure, little maid?' 'Because--because he
doesn't look like it,' said Una stoutly.

'I thank you,' said Simon to Una. 'I--I was always trustable-like
with children if you let me alone, you double handful o' mischief.' He
pretended to heave up his axe on Puck; and then his shyness overtook him
afresh.

'Where did you know Sir Francis Drake?' said Dan, not liking being
called a child.

'At Rye Port, to be sure,' said Simon, and seeing Dan's bewilderment,
repeated it.

'Yes, but look here,'said Dan. '"Drake he was a Devon man." The song
says so.'

'"And ruled the Devon seas,"' Una went on. 'That's what I was
thinking--if you don't mind.'

Simon Cheyneys seemed to mind very much indeed, for he swelled in
silence while Puck laughed.

'Hutt!' he burst out at last, 'I've heard that talk too. If you listen
to them West Country folk, you'll listen to a pack o' lies. I believe
Frankie was born somewhere out west among the Shires, but his father
had to run for it when Frankie was a baby, because the neighbours was
wishful to kill him, d'ye see? He run to Chatham, old Parson Drake did,
an' Frankie was brought up in a old hulks of a ship moored in the Medway
river, same as it might ha' been the Rother. Brought up at sea, you
might say, before he could walk on land--nigh Chatham in Kent. And ain't
Kent back-door to Sussex? And don't that make Frankie Sussex? O' course
it do. Devon man! Bah! Those West Country boats they're always fishin'
in other folks' water.'

'I beg your pardon,' said Dan. 'I'm sorry.

'No call to be sorry. You've been misled. I met Frankie at Rye Port when
my Uncle, that was the shipbuilder there, pushed me off his wharf-edge
on to Frankie's ship. Frankie had put in from Chatham with his rudder
splutted, and a man's arm--Moon's that 'ud be--broken at the tiller.
"Take this boy aboard an' drown him," says my Uncle, "and I'll mend your
r