“My son, thou knowest that I would not send thee from me willingly.  I had not done so ere now, but that it was well for thee to know the world and men, and Sheffield is a mere nest of intrigue and falsehood, where even if one keeps one’s integrity, it is hard to be believed.  But for my Lord, thy mother, and my poor folk, I would gladly go with thee to strike honest downright blows at a foe I could see and feel, rather than be nothing better than a warder, and be driven distracted with women’s tongues.  Why, they have even set division between my Lord and his son Gilbert, who was ever the dearest to him.  Young as he is, methinks Diccon would be better away with thee than where the very air smells of plots and lies.”

“I trow the Queen of Scots will not be here much longer,” said Humfrey.  “Men say in London that Sir Ralf Sadler is even now setting forth to take charge of her, and send my Lord to London.”

“We have had such hopes too often, my son,” said Richard.  “Nay, she hath left us more than once, but always to fall back upon Sheffield like a weight to the ground.  But she is full of hope in her son, now that he is come of age, and hath put to death her great foe, the Earl of Morton.”

“The poor lady might as well put her faith in—­in a jelly-fish,” said Humfrey, falling on a comparison perfectly appreciated by the old sailor.

“Heh?  She will get naught but stings.  How knowest thou?”

“Why, do none know here that King James is in the hands of him they call the Master of Gray?”

“Queen Mary puts in him her chief hope.”

“Then she hath indeed grasped a jelly-fish.  Know you not, father, those proud and gay ones, with rose-coloured bladders and long blue beards—­blue as the azure of a herald’s coat?”

“Ay, marry I do.  I remember when I was a lad, in my first voyage, laying hold on one.  I warrant you I danced about till I was nearly overboard, and my arm was as big as two for three days later.  Is the fellow of that sort?  The false Scot.”

“Look you, father, I met in London that same Johnstone who was one of this lady’s gentlemen at one time.  You remember him.  He breakfasted at Bridgefield once or twice ere the watch became more strict.”

“Yea, I remember him.  He was an honest fellow for a Scot.”

“When he made out that I was the little lad he remembered, he was very courteous, and desired his commendations to you and to my mother.  He had been in Scotland, and had come south in the train of this rogue, Gray.  I took him to see the old Pelican, and we had a breakfast aboard there.  He asked much after his poor Queen, whom he loves as much as ever, and when he saw I was a man he could trust, your true son, he said that he saw less hope for her than ever in Scotland—­her friends have been slain or exiled, and the young generation that has grown up have learned to dread her like an incarnation of the scarlet one of Babylon.  Their