Then she was pleased to ask me, how I could dare, as her sworn servant, to desert her side in such dangerous times as these; and asked me how I should reconcile it to my conscience, if on my return I found her dead by the assassin’s knife?  At which most pathetic demand I could only throw myself at once on my own knees and her mercy, and so awaited my sentence.  Whereon, with that angelic pity which alone makes her awfulness endurable, she turned to Hatton and asked, ’What say you, Mouton?  Is he humbled sufficiently?’ and so dismissed me.”

“Heigh-ho!” yawned Amyas;

     “If the bridge had been stronger,
     My tale had been longer.”

“Amyas!  Amyas!” quoth Frank, solemnly, “you know not what power over the soul has the native and God-given majesty of royalty (awful enough in itself) when to it is superadded the wisdom of the sage, and therewithal the tenderness of the woman.  Had I my will, there should be in every realm not a salique, but an anti-salique law:  whereby no kings, but only queens should rule mankind.  Then would weakness and not power be to man the symbol of divinity; love, and not cunning, would be the arbiter of every cause; and chivalry, not fear, the spring of all obedience.”

“Humph!  There’s some sense in that,” quoth Amyas.  “I’d run a mile for a woman when I would not walk a yard for a man; and—­Who is this our mother is bringing in?  The handsomest fellow I ever saw in my life!”

Amyas was not far wrong; for Mrs. Leigh’s companion was none other than Mr. Secretary, Amyas’s Smerwick Fort acquaintance; alias Colin Clout, alias Immerito, alias Edmund Spenser.  Some half-jesting conversation had seemingly been passing between the poet and the saint; for as they came in she said with a smile (which was somewhat of a forced one)—­“Well, my dear sons, you are sure of immortality, at least on earth; for Mr. Spenser has been vowing to me to give your adventure a whole canto to itself in his ’Faerie Queene’.”

“And you no less, madam,” said Spenser.  “What were the story of the Gracchi worth without the figure of Cornelia?  If I honor the fruit, I must not forget the stem which bears it.  Frank, I congratulate you.”

“Then you know the result of my interview, mother?”

“I know everything, and am content,” said Mrs. Leigh.

“Mrs. Leigh has reason to be content,” said Spenser, “with that which is but her own likeness.”

Spare your flattery to an old woman, Mr. Spenser.  When, pray, did I” (with a most loving look at Frank) “refuse knighthood for duty’s sake?”

“Knighthood?” cried Amyas.  “You never told me that, Frank!”

“That may well be, Captain Leigh,” said Spenser; “but believe me, her majesty (so Hatton assures me) told him this day, no less than that by going on this quest he deprived himself of that highest earthly honor, which crowned heads are fain to seek from their own subjects.”