Then, too, it was no everyday tale to be stolen away from home.  It was a wild, strange thing with a strange, wild sound to it, not altogether terrible or unpleasant to a brave boy’s ears in that wonder-filled age, when all the world was turned adventurer, and England led the fore; when Francis Drake and the “Golden Hind,” John Hawkins and the “Victory,” Frobisher and his cockleshells, were gossip for every English fireside; when the whole world rang with English steel, and the wide sea foamed with English keels, and the air was full of the blaze of the living and the ghosts of the mighty dead.  And down in Nick’s plucky young English heart there came a spark like that which burns in the soul of a mariner when for the first time an unknown ocean rolls before his eyes.

So he rode on bravely, filled with a sense of daring and the thrill of perils more remote than Master Carew’s altogether too adjacent poniard, as well as with a sturdy determination to escape at the first opportunity, in spite of all the master-player’s threats.

Up Highgate Hill they rattled in a bracing northeast wind, the rugged country bowling back against the tumbled sky.  Far to south a rusty haze had gloomed against the sun like a midday fog, mile after mile; and suddenly, as they topped the range and cleared the last low hill, they saw a city in the south spreading away until it seemed to Nick to girdle half the world and to veil the sky in a reek of murky sea-coal smoke.

“There!” said Carew, reining in the gray, as Nick looked up and felt his heart almost stand still; “since Parma burned old Antwerp, and the Low Countries are dead, there lies the market-heart of all the big round world!”

“London!” cried Nick, and, catching his breath with a quick gasp, sat speechless, staring.

Carew smiled.  “Ay, Nick,” said he, cheerily; “’tis London town.  Pluck up thine heart, lad, and be no more cast down; there lies a New World ready to thine hand.  Thou canst win it if thou wilt.  Come, let it be thine Indies, thou Francis Drake, and I thy galleon to carry home the spoils!  And cheer up.  It grieves my heart to see thee sad.  Be merry for my sake.”

“For thy sake?” gasped Nick, staring blankly in his face.  “Why, what hast thou done for me?” A sudden sob surprised him, and he clenched his fists—­it was too cruel irony.  “Why, sir, if thou wouldst only leave me go!”

“Tut, tut!” cried Carew, angrily.  “Still harping on that same old string?  Why, from thy waking face I thought thou hadst dropped it long ago.  Let thee go?  Not for all the wealth in Lombard street!  Dost think me a goose-witted gull?—­and dost ask what I have done for thee?  Thou simpleton!  I have made thee rise above the limits of thy wildest dream—­have shod thy feet with gold—­have filled thy lap with glory—­have crowned thine head with fame!  And yet, ’What have I done for thee?’ Fie!  Thou art a stubborn-hearted little fool.  But, marry come up!  I’ll mend thy mind.  I’ll bend thy will to suit my way, or break it in the bending!”