and on it were carved the initials, R. L. | the way of trimming. She looked up and J. C.

with a sort of brisk impatience as her visitor approached, but no gleam of welcome shone from her keen, light

Tom lifted Damaris from the wagon that she might see it better; and when she was on the ground he kept his arm | eyes, and no smile of pleasure softened still round her, and she kissed and the lines of her thin lips. thanked him for having made her poor sister's last resting-place such as it

was.

"I'd like Widow Carter to see it too," she said. "C'uldn't we ask her to spend a short spell with us, Tom, when Christmas is over?"

Damaris had nourished a faint little hope of a more cordial reception. Without putting her thoughts on the subject into words in her own mind, she had relied much on the general fact that it is the natural bent of human beings to feel more amiably disposed "You kin always do jest what your towards those whom they have benegood heart tells you, Damaris," he fited, than towards those who have answered, thinking in deep content-benefited them. She was fully sensible ment, how well it was for him that she of the weight of her obligations to Mrs. had done so until now. Nettleby, as well as quite sure that she had never been able to do anything in any way tending to Sarah's personal good; hence her hopefulness. generalities are not bound to suit all particular cases.

Then they opened the gate, and went into the garden of the dead; and, knowing nothing at all about the black iniquity of symbols and emblems, they knelt down together beside the little cross, and said their prayers in singleness of heart, no more doubting that they were looked upon by Jeff and Rhoda than that they were looked upon by God.

CHAPTER X.

On the last day of this eventful year Damaris went to visit Sarah Nettleby with the intention of thanking her heartily for past kindnesses, and of making some trembling advances towards future friendship, as she felt in duty bound to do. She provided herself with a basketful of sundry vegetables which did not flourish in Joe's garden, and set forth with her offering in her hand. Tom drove her as far as the Nettlebys' fence, and then, seeing Joe at work in his grove, hitched his horse to the gate post, and went to chat with him while Damaris walked on to the house.

Again Sarah was washing. For the sake of coolness, her tub had been carried out of the kitchen, and placed on a bench at the back of the house, and she stood over it, with her thin red arms, bare to a considerable distance above their sharp elbows, and her face shaded from the sun by a discolored old straw hat, innocent of any vanity in

But

Sarah looked back into her washingtub, and gave a few more vigorous, scrubs to the gown on which she was employed. This was disconcerting, as Damaris was within easy speaking distance, and might reasonably expect some recognition of her presence. she drew nearer, however, Sarah looked up again, and asked abruptly :—

As

"Do you want me, Mrs. Rockner?" "I only wanted," answered Damaris, in most evident embarrassment, "to thank you for all you did for me while I was sick, and — and - more than that, for letting me stay here when I was in trouble. I can't tell you

"Oh, that's all right, Mrs. Rockner," interrupted Sarah. "I hate thanks. If you have nothin' more partic'lar to say I guess I'll quit, for I have my wash finished, and I want to hang the clothes out to dry."

Damaris felt that it would be culpable weakness to give in at the first rebuff, so she asked, with as pleasant a face as was possible under the circumstances:

"Can I do any chores that would help you as I'm here? Tom is out in the grove talking to Mr. Nettleby, and he ain't ready to take me back home jest this minute."

"Ain't he? Then you set right

After this broad hint Tom and Damaris had nothing for it but to take their immediate departure, followed regret fully to the gate by Joe. One last effort, indeed, Damaris made before turning away from Sarah in final defeat. As she took her hand in bidding good-bye, she wished her a happy New Year, and bent her head with the halfformed intention of kissing her. In än instant Sarah's arm became rigid, and Damaris was conscious of being held off at the full length of it. It was fortunate that she had no very strong 1893.

thought it worth her while to do, by | of his anchorage at Calais. He was a

making him the hero of an epic poem. There are heroes and heroes. Lope de Vega's epic is called "The Dragontea." Drake himself is the dragon, the ancient serpent of the Apocalypse. We English have been contented to allow Drake a certain qualified praise. We admit that he was a bold, dexterous sailor, that he did his country good service at the invasion. We allow that he was a famous navigator, and sailed round the world, which no one else had done before him. But-there is always a but of course he was a robber and a corsair, and the only excuse for him is that he was no worse than most of his contemporaries. To Lope de Vega he was a great deal worse. He was Satan himself, the incarnation of the genius of evil, the arch-enemy of the Church of God.

child of the sea, and at sea he died, sinking at last into his mother's arms. But of this hereafter. I must speak now of his still more illustrious kinsman, Francis Drake.

I told you the other day generally who Drake was and where he came from; how he went to sea as a boy, found favor with his master, became early an owner of his own ship, sticking steadily to trade. You hear nothing of him in connection with the Channel pirates. It was not till he was fiveand-twenty that he was tempted by Hawkins into the negro-catching business, and of this one experiment was enough. He never tried it again.

The portraits of him vary very much, as indeed it is natural that they should, for most of those which pass for Drake were not meant for Drake at all. It is It is worth while to look more partic- the fashion in this country, and a very ularly at the figure of a man who ap-bad fashion, when we find a remarkpeared to the Spaniards in such terrible able portrait with no name authoritaproportions. I, for my part, believe a time will come when we shall see better than we see now what the Reformation was and what we owe to it, and these sea-captains of Elizabeth will then form the subject of a great English national epic as grand as the Odyssey.

In my own poor way meanwhile I shall try in these lectures to draw you a sketch of Drake and his doings as they appear to myself. To-day I can but give you a part of the rich and varied story, but if all goes well I hope I may be able to continue it at a future time.

tively attached to it, to christen it at random after some eminent man, and there it remains to perplex or mislead.

The best likeness of Drake that I know is an engraving in Sir William Stirling Maxwell's collection of sixteenth-century notabilities, representing him, as a scroll says at the foot of the plate, at the age of forty-three. The face is round, the forehead broad and full, with the short, brown hair curling crisply on either side. The eyebrows are highly arched, the eyes firm, clear, and open. I cannot undertake for the color, but I should judge I have not yet done with Sir John they would be dark grey, like an Hawkins. We shall hear of him again. eagle's. The nose is short and thick, He became the manager of Elizabeth's the mouth and chin hid by a heavy dockyards. He it was who turned out moustache on the upper lip, and a the ships that fought Philip's fleet in close-clipped beard well spread over the Channel in such condition that not chin and cheek. The expression is a hull leaked, not a spar was sprung, good-humored, but absolutely inflexnot a rope parted at an unseasonable ible, not a weak line to be seen. moment, and this at a minimum of was of middle height, powerfully built, cost. He served himself in the squad- perhaps too powerfully for grace, unron which he had equipped. He was less the quilted doublet in which the one of the small group of admirals who artist has dressed him exaggerates his met that Sunday afternoon in the cabin breadth. of the ark Raleigh and sent the fire- I have seen another portrait of him, ships down to stir Medina Sidonia out with pretensions to authenticity, in

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which he appears with a slighter figure, eyes dark, full, thoughtful, and stern, a sailor's cord about his neck with a whistle attached to it, and a ring into which a thumb is carelessly thrust, the weight of the arms resting on it, as if in a characteristic attitude. Evidently this is a carefully drawn likeness of some remarkable seaman of the time. I should like to believe it to be Drake, but I can feel no certainty about it.

We left him returned home in the Judith from San Juan de Ulloa, a ruined man. He had never injured the Spaniards. He had gone out with his cousin merely to trade, and he had met with a hearty reception from the settlers wherever he had been. A Spanish admiral had treacherously set upon him and his kinsman, destroyed half their vessels and robbed them of all that they had. They had left a number of their comrades behind them, for whose fate they might fear the worst. Drake thenceforth considered Spanish property as fair game till he had made up his own losses. He waited quietly for four years till he had re-established himself, and then prepared to try fortune again in a more daring form.

He told no one where he was going. He was no more communicative than necessary after his return, and the results, rather than the particulars, of his adventure are all that can be certainly known. Discretion told him to keep his counsel, and he kept it.

The Drake family published an account of this voyage in the middle of the next century; but obviously mythical, in parts demonstrably false, and nowhere to be depended on. It can be made out, however, that he did go to Nombre de Dios, that he found his way into the town, and saw stores of bullion there which he would have liked to carry off but could not. A romantic story of a fight in the town I disbelieve, first because his numbers were so small that to try force would have been absurd, and next because if there had been really anything like a battle an alarm would have been raised in the neighborhood, and it is evident that no alarm was given. In the woods were parties of runaway slaves, who were called Cimarons. It was to these that Drake addressed himself, and they volunteered to guide him where he could surprise the treasure convoy on the way from Panama. His movements were silent and rapid. One interesting incident is mentioned which is authentic. The Cimarons took him through the forest to the watershed which the streams flow to both oceans. Nothing could be seen through the jungle of undergrowth; but Drake climbed a tall tree, saw from the top of it the Pacific glittering below him, and made a vow that one day he would himself sail a ship in those waters.

The ill-luck at San Juan de Ulloa had risen from loose tongues. There had been too much talk about it. Too many parties had been concerned. The Spanish government had notice and were prepared. Drake determined from to act for himself, have no partners, and keep his own secret. He found friends to trust him with money without asking for explanations. The Plymouth sailors were eager to take their chance with him. His force was absurdly small a sloop or brigantine of a hundred tons, which he called the For the present he had immediate Dragon (perhaps, like Lope de Vega, work on hand. His guides kept their playing on his own name), and two word. They led him to the track from small pinnaces. With these he left Panama, and he had not long to wait Plymouth in the fall of the summer of before the tinkling was heard of the 1572. He had ascertained that Philip's mule bells as they were coming up the gold and silver from the Peruvian pass. There was no suspicion of danmines was landed at Panama, carried ger, not the faintest. The mule train across the Isthmus on mules' backs on | had but its ordinary guard, who fled at the line of M. Lesseps's Canal, and reshipped at Nombre de Dios at the mouth of the Chagre River.

the first surprise. The immense booty fell all into Drake's hands-gold, jewels, silver bars and got with much

ease, as Prince Hal said at Gadshill. | in which he was preparing to tempt The silver they buried, as too heavy fortune seem preposterously small. for transport. The gold, pearls, ru- The Pelican, or Golden Hinde, which bies, emeralds, and diamonds they car- belonged to Drake himself, was called ried down straight to their ship. The but one hundred and twenty tons, at voyage home went prosperously. The best no larger than a modern racing spoils were shared among the adven-yawl, though perhaps no racing yawl turers, and they had no reason to com- ever left White's yard better found for plain. They were wise enough to hold their tongues, and Drake was in a condition to look about him and prepare for bigger enterprises.

the work which she had to do. The next, the Elizabeth of London, was said to be eighty tons; a small pinnace of twelve tons, in which we should hardly risk a summer cruise round the Land's End, with two sloops or frigates of fifty and thirty tons, made the rest. The Elizabeth was commanded by Captain Winter, a queen's officer and per

Rumors got abroad, spite of reticence. Imagination was high in flight just then; rash amateurs thought they could make their fortunes in the same way, and tried it, to their sorrow. A sort of inflation can be traced in En-haps a son of the old admiral. glish sailors' minds as their work expanded. Even Hawkins, the clear, practical Hawkins, was infected. The crews of Philip's men-of-war went annually in the winter in vast numbers to the Banks of Newfoundland to fish. Hawkins told Elizabeth that if she would let him take four or five ships he would go out and destroy the whole of them. But Elizabeth must order it herself. "Decide, madam," he wrote to her in his great round hand, "and decide quickly. Time flies, and the wings of man's life are plumed with the feathers of death." This was not in Drake's line. He kept to prose and fact. He studied the globe. He examined all the charts that he could get. He became known to the Privy Council and the queen, and prepared for an enterprise which would make his name and frighten Philip in earnest.

The ships which the Spaniards used on the Pacific were usually built on the spot. But Magellan was known to have gone by the Horn, and where a Portuguese could go an Englishman could go. Drake proposed to try. There was a party in Elizabeth's Council against these adventures and in favor of peace with Spain; but Elizabeth herself was always for enterprises of pith and moment. She was willing to help, and others of her Council were willing too, provided their names were not to appear. The responsibility was to be Drake's own. Again, the vessels

We may credit Drake with knowing what he was about. He and his comrades were carrying their lives in their hands. If they were taken they would be inevitably hanged. Their safety depended on speed of sailing, and specially in the power of working fast to windward, which the heavy, squarerigged ships could not do. The crews all told were one hundred and sixty men and boys. Drake had his brother John with him. Among his officers were the chaplain, Mr. Fletcher, another minister of some kind who spoke Spanish, and in one of the sloops a mysterious Mr. Doughty. Who Mr. Doughty was, and why he was sent out, is uncertain. When an expedition of consequence was on hand, the Spanish party in the Cabinet usually attached to it some second in command whose business was to defeat the object. When Drake went to Cadiz in after years to singe King Philip's beard, he had a colleague sent with him whom he had to lock into his cabin before he could get to his work. So far as I can make out, Mr. Doughty had a similar commission. On this occasion secrecy was impossible. It was generally known that Drake was going to the Pacific through Magellan Straits, to act afterwards on his own judgment. The Spanish ambassador, now Don Bernardino de Mendoza, in informing Philip of what was intended, advised him to send out orders for the instant