Though Humfrey had set forth merely as a lieutenant, he had returned
in command of a vessel, and stood in high repute for good discipline,
readiness of resource, and personal exploits. His ship had, however,
suffered so severely as to be scarcely seaworthy when the fleet
arrived in Plymouth harbour; and Sir Francis, finding it necessary to
put her into dock and dismiss her crew, had chosen the young Captain
Talbot to ride to London with his despatches to her Majesty.

The commission might well delight the brothers, who were burning to
hear of home, and to know how it fared with Cicely, having been
absolutely without intelligence ever since they had sailed from
Plymouth in January, since which they had plundered the Spaniard both
at home and in the West Indies, but had had no letters.

They rode post into London, taking their last change of horses at
Kensington, on a fine June evening, when the sun was mounting high
upon the steeple of St. Paul's, and speeding through the fields in
hopes of being able to reach the Strand in time for supper at Lord
Shrewsbury's mansion, which, even in the absence of my Lord, was
always a harbour for all of the name of Talbot. Nor, indeed, was it
safe to be out after dark, for the neighbourhood of the city was full
of roisterers of all sorts, if not of highwaymen and cutpurses, who
might come in numbers too large even for the two young gentlemen and
the two servants, who remained out of the four volunteers from
Bridgefield.

They were just passing Westminster where the Abbey, Hall, and St.
Stephen's Chapel, and their precincts, stood up in their venerable
but unstained beauty among the fields and fine trees, and some of the
Westminster boys, flat-capped, gowned, and yellow-stockinged, ran out