e'en be forced (I told 'em so) to
give him up their young lives. If they failed, and again by some miracle
escaped Philip's hand, and crept back to England with their bare lives,
they must lie--oh, I told 'em all--under my sovereign displeasure. She
could not know them, see them, nor hear their names, nor stretch out a
finger to save them from the gallows, if Philip chose to ask it.

'"Be it the gallows, then," says the elder. (I could have wept, but that
my face was made for the day.)

'"Either way--any way--this venture is death, which I know you fear not.
But it is death with assured dishonour," I cried.

'"Yet our Queen will know in her heart what we have done," says the
younger. '"Sweetheart," I said. "A queen has no heart."

'"But she is a woman, and a woman would not forget," says the elder. "We
will go!" They knelt at my feet.

'"Nay, dear lads--but here!" I said, and I opened my arms to them and I
kissed them.

'"Be ruled by me," I said. "We'll hire some ill-featured old
tarry-breeks of an admiral to watch the Graveyard, and you shall come to
Court."

'"Hire whom you please," says the elder; "we are ruled by you, body and
soul"; and the younger, who shook most when I kissed 'em, says between
his white lips, "I think you have power to make a god of a man."

'"Come to Court and be sure of't," I said.

'They shook their heads and I knew--I knew, that go they would. If I had
not kissed them--perhaps I might have prevailed.'

'Then why did you do it?' said Una. 'I don't think you knew really what
you wanted done.'

'May it please your Majesty'--the lady bowed her head low--'this
Gloriana whom I have represented for your pleasure was a woman and a
Queen. Remember her when you come to your Kingdom.'

'But--did the cousins go to the Gascons' Graveyard?' said Dan, as Una
frowned.

'They went,' said the lady.

'Did they ever come back?' Una began; but--'Did they stop King Philip's
fleet?' Dan interrupted.

The lady turned to him eagerly.

'D'you think they did right to go?' she asked.

'I don't see what else they could have done,' Dan replied, after
thinking it over.

'D'you think she did right to send 'em?' The lady's voice rose a little.

'Well,' said Dan, 'I don't see what else she could have done, either--do
you? How did they stop King Philip from getting Virginia?'

'There's the sad part of it. They sailed out that autumn from Rye Royal,
and there never came back so much as a single rope-ya