crowned, she rose above the peoples, Joseph's sheaf, Joseph's star!

On went the charmed words, each a lantern flashed on thought, grave,
poetic, telling of triumph, yet far removed from gross optimism, not
without that strange, melancholy note sounding now and again amongst the
age's crashing chords. Abruptly his voice fell, but presently with a
lighter note he broke the silence in which his listeners gazed upon the
stately vision he had conjured up. "Ah, we will talk to Frank Drake of
this night! Canst not hear Richard Hawkins laugh in the Triple Tun's
long-room? The Queen, too, in her palace will laugh,--like a man with
the flash in her eye and her white hand clenched! And they whom we
love.... What is the word for to-night, John Nevil? I may give it?
Then--Dione!"

It was the red dawn after his vigil on the fortress hill: in the great
room of the stone house the leaders of the expedition had followed, line
by line, his sword point as it drew upon the flagging a plan of attack,
to which they gave instant adoption; Master Francis Sark had been
dismissed, and to the Admiral's grave hint of possible treachery Ferne
had answered, "Ay, John Nevil, I also think him a false--hearted craven,
Spaniolated and perverse, a huckster, whose wares do go to the highest
bidder! Well, with our hand at his throat we do not bid the highest?"

Now as he raised his tankard to thirsty lips, suddenly from the square
below, shattering all the languid stillness of the tropic dawn, brayed a
trumpet, arose a noise of hurrying steps and hasty voices. Baldry, at
the window, wheeled, color in his cheeks, light in his deep eyes.

"War is my mistress! Down the hillside come those to whom I can
speak--can speak as well as thou, Sir Mortimer Ferne!" The door was