"And that man?"
"Is the priest, Father Jerome."
Raleigh sat up. "Canst describe him?"
"Ay. He is tall, lean, and yellow, looks a Spaniard, but speaks English as no foreigner could speak it. He hath money in plenty, and poor folk and greedy folk often fall a prey to Mammon."
"I have met this Father Jerome, unless I mistake him greatly. He is a Spaniard without doubt, and came hither first in the train of the Spanish ambassador in King Harry's reign. He came again with Philip when he took Queen Mary to wife, and stayed here the whole of that reign and much of the present. He knows our land and our language as well as thou or I, and Philip has chosen the fittest leader for his bold enterprise. Thou hast gotten a dangerous adversary; do not hold him cheaply, for he obtains a strange power over some men. 'Tis against his nature to strike openly. He works like a mole, and thou must find his place of burrowing and trap him. Meantime I commend the advice of the Queen to thee: lay all suspicious characters by the heels at once; put rogues to catch rogues, and have a care how thou walkest in the woods."
Sir Walter arose, but the admiral pressed him to stay and drink a cup of wine. So the two friends sat on a while longer, talking of old times in far-away Devon.
Hidden in the bushes on the top of the sandstone cliff that backed Drake's house was the dark figure of Basil. He wriggled thither at the moment when Raleigh lifted the garden latch.