es into marching order.

"So I have, Dolly," he answered. "I am enamoured of--"

"Whom?"

"A friend of Master Jeffreys."

The girl's cheeks flushed. "Thou art bold to say such a thing to me."

"I imbibed courage with a flagon of sack this morning."

"It hath got to thy head."

"And my heart, Dolly; I am afire, heart and head. I see visions, and
pulse with great hopes."

"I trust the wench will prove kind, and not grow plain of face on a
closer acquaintance."

"For that fair wish, a thousand thanks, dear Dolly."

"Mistress Dawe, if it please you, Master Morgan." Dorothy bobbed a
scornful curtsy, and left the parlour.

"What's amiss with you two?" asked Captain Dawe. "Ye were billing and
cooing like two pigeons over breakfast this morning."

"And shall be doing so again over supper," said Johnnie.

"What's this nonsense about a wench who is a friend to Master Jeffreys?"

"There is no wench. I am enamoured of a fellow with a visage like
brown leather, and who hath but one thumb and one ear."

"Thou art talking in riddles."

"Master Jeffreys shall make them clear; he hath a better gift of words
than I."

So the Devon man retold the story of John Oxenham's voyage; and he
added many strange things that lie had heard from other Plymouth men
who had gone to the Indies, and whom he had met in Raleigh's company.
He himself had gone westwards to Virginia, and other parts of the
American mainland, and could relate wonders from his own experiences.
He talked for full two hours, and both Mrs. Stowe and Dorothy stole in
to listen.

The next day Paignton Rob and his two stranded comrades found
themselves seated at Mistress Stowe's table to dinner. Morgan and the
captain hung about the aisles of St. Paul's for more than an hour,
waiting in the hope that the sailors would appear. Jeffreys went down
to Whitehall, found them in the neighbourhood of Raleigh's lodgings,
and brought them into the city.

The three derelict mariners were not slow to divine one reason for the
pressing invitation that had brought them hot-foot from Whitehall to
Wood Street. Rob's story of the fabled Spanish Main had opened
Mistress Stowe's door to such dilapidated guests; it would have opened
hundreds of other English doors to the maimed adventurers. The whole
country was smitten with the fever of travel, and possessed with the
lust for wealth and conquest. Men and women believed strange things of
the wonderful western world, a