* * *

At last, after twelve years of prison, Raleigh is free. He is sixty-
six years old now, gray-headed and worn down by confinement, study,
and want of exercise: but he will not remember that.


'Still in his ashes live their wonted fire.'


Now for Guiana, at last! which he has never forgotten; to which he
has been sending, with his slender means, ship after ship to keep the
Indians in hope.

He is freed in March. At once he is busy in his project. In August
he has obtained the King's commission, by the help of Sir Ralph
Winwood, Secretary of State, who seems to have believed in Raleigh.
At least Raleigh believed in him. In March next year he has sailed,
and with him thirteen ships, and more than a hundred knights and
gentlemen, and among them, strange to say, Sir Warham St. Leger.
This is certainly not the quondam Marshal of Munster under whom
Raleigh served at Smerwick six-and-thirty years ago. He would be
nearly eighty years old; and as Lord Doneraile's pedigree gives three
Sir Warhams, we cannot identify the man. But it is a strong argument
in Raleigh's favour that a St. Leger, of a Devon family which had
served with him in Ireland, and intimately connected with him his
whole life, should keep his faith in Raleigh after all his reverses.
Nevertheless, the mere fact of an unpardoned criminal, said to be non
ens in law, being able in a few months to gather round him such a
party, is proof patent of what slender grounds there are for calling