“Sir Francis could not see Captain Talbot, and prayed him to excuse him, and send in the letter.”

“It can’t be helped,” said Cavendish, with his youthful airs of patronage.  “He would gladly have spoken with you when I told him of you, but that Maude is just come on business that may not tarry.  So you must e’en entrust your packet to me.”

“Maude,” repeated Humfrey, “Was that man’s name Maude?  I should have dared be sworn that he was my father’s kinsman, Cuthbert Langston.”

“Very like,” said Will, “I would dare be sworn to nothing concerning him, but that he is one of the greatest and most useful villains unhung.”

So saying, Will Cavendish disappeared with the letters.  He probably had had a caution administered to him, for when he returned he was evidently swelling with the consciousness of a State secret, which he would not on any account betray, yet of the existence of which he desired to make his old comrade aware.

Humfrey asked whether he had told Mr. Secretary of the man in Richmond Park.

“Never fear! he knows it,” returned the budding statesman.  “Why, look you, a man like Sir Francis has ten thousand means of intelligence that a simple mariner like you would never guess at.  I thought it strange myself when I came first into business of State, but he hath eyes and ears everywhere, like the Queen’s gown in her picture.  Men of the Privy Council, you see, must despise none, for the lewdest and meanest rogues oft prove those who can do the best service, just as the bandy-legged cur will turn the spit, or unearth the fox when your gallant hound can do nought but bay outside.”

“Is this Maude, or Langston, such a cur?”

Cavendish gave his head a shake that expressed unutterable things, saying:  “Your kinsman, said you?  I trust not on the Talbot side of the house?”

“No.  On his mother’s side.  I wondered the more to see him here as he got that halt in the Rising of the North, and on the wrong side, and hath ever been reckoned a concealed Papist.”

“Ay, ay.  Dost not see, mine honest Humfrey, that’s the very point that fits him for our purpose?”

“You mean that he is a double traitor and informer.”

“We do not use such hard words in the Privy Council Board as you do on deck, my good friend,” said Cavendish.  “We have our secret intelligencers, you see, all in the Queen’s service.  Foul and dirty work, but you can’t dig out a fox without soiling of fingers, and if there be those that take kindly to the work, why, e’en let them do it.”

“Then there is a plot?”

“Content you, Humfrey!  You’ll hear enough of it anon.  A most foul, bloody, and horrible plot, quite enough to hang every soul that has meddled in it, and yet safe to do no harm—­like poor Hal’s blunderbuss, which would never go off, except when it burst, and blew him to pieces.”

Will felt that he had said quite enough to impress Humfrey with a sense of his statecraft and importance, and was not sorry for an interruption before he should have said anything dangerous.  It was from Frank Pierrepoint, who had been Diccon’s schoolmate, and was enchanted to see him.  Humfrey was to stay one day longer in town in case Walsingham should wish to see him, and to show Diccon something of London, which they had missed on their way to Plymouth.