and so,
according to Lord Leicester's desire, he sent him a "discourse" on the
subject, which he begged Sir Francis to "peruse, add to, or take away
from," and then to inclose to the Earl. He hoped he should be forgiven if
the style of the production was not quite satisfactory; for, said he,
"the place where I am doth too much torment my memory, to call every
point to my remembrance."

It must, in truth, have been somewhat a hard task upon his memory, to
keep freshly in mind every detail of the parallel correspondence which he
was carrying on with the Spanish and with the English government. Even a
cool head like Roland's might be forgiven for being occasionally puzzled.
"So if there be anything hard to be understood," he observed to
Walsingham, "advertise me, and I will make it plainer." Nothing could be
more ingenuous. He confessed, however, to being out of pocket. "Please
your honour," said he, "I have taken great pains to make a bad place
something, and it has cost me all the money I had, and here I can receive
nothing but discontentment. I dare not write you all lest you should
think it impossible," he added--and it is quite probable that even
Walsingham would have been astonished, had Roland written all. The game
playing by York and Stanley was not one to which English gentlemen were
much addicted.

"I trust the bearer, Edward Stanley; a discreet, brave gentleman," he
said, "with details." And the remark proves that the gallant youth who
had captured this very Fort Zutphen in, so brilliant a manner was not
privy to the designs of his brother and of York; for the object of the
"discourse" was to deceive the English government.

"I humbly beseech that you will send for me home," concluded Roland, "for
true as I humbled my mind to please her Majesty, your honour, and the
dead, now am I content to humble myself lower to please myself, for now,
since his, Excellency's departure, there is no form of proceeding neither
honourably nor honestly."

Three other weeks passed over, weeks of anxiety and dread throughout the
republic. Suspicion grew darker than ever, not only as to York and
Stanley, but as to all the English commanders, as to the whole English
nation. An Anjou plot, a general massacre, was expected by many, yet
there were no definite grounds for such dark anticipations. In vain had
painstaking, truth-telling Wilkes summoned Stanley to his duty, and
called on Leicester, time after time, to interfere. In vain