I may as well finish his story here and now, though I must jump forward thirteen and more years to accomplish it. At the end of that time the King’s exchequer being low (as it nearly always was), and there being rumors afloat of possible gold findings in Raleigh’s rich country of Guiana, the old knight, now in his sixty-seventh year, felt the spirit of adventure stirred in him by the west wind that crept through the gratings of his prison bringing tropical odors; and he volunteered to equip a fleet in company with friends, and with the King’s permission to go in quest of mines, to which he believed, or professed to believe, he had the clew. The permission was reluctantly granted; and poor Lady Raleigh sold her estate, as well as their beloved country home of Sherborne (in Dorset) to vest in the new enterprise. But the fates were against it: winds blew the ships astray; tempests beat upon them; mutinies threatened; and in Guiana, at last, there came disastrous fights with the Spaniards. Keymis, the second in command, and an old friend of Raleigh’s, being reproached by this latter in a moment of frenzy, withdraws and shoots himself; Raleigh’s own son, too, is sacrificed, and the crippled squadron sets out homeward, with no gold, and shattered ships and maddened crews. Storm overtakes them; there is mutiny; there is wreck; only a few forlorn and battered hulks bring back this disheartened knight. He lands in his old home of Devon--is warned to flee the wrath that will fall upon him in London; but as of old he lifts his gray head proudly, and pushes for the capital to meet his accusers. Arrived there, he is made to know by those strong at court that there is no hope, for he has brought no gold; and yielding to friendly entreaties he makes a final effort at escape. He does outwit his immediate guards and takes to a little wherry that bears him down the Thames: a half-day more and he would have taken wings for France. But the sleuth-hounds are on his track; he is seized, imprisoned, and in virtue of his old sentence--the cold-hearted Bacon making the law for it--is brought to the block. He walks to the scaffold with serene dignity--greets old friends cheerfully--dies cheerfully, and so enters on the pilgrimage he had set forth in his cumbrous verse:-- “There the blessed paths we’ll travel, Strow’d with rubies thick as gravel; Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors, High walls of coral and pearly bowers. From thence to Heaven’s bribeless hall, Where no corrupted voices brawl; No conscience molten into gold, No forg’d accuser bought or sold, No cause deferr’d, no vain-spent Journey, For there Christ is the King’s Attorney, Who pleads for all without degrees, And He hath angels, but no fees. And when the grand twelve-million jury Of our sins, with direful fury, Against our souls black verdicts give, Christ pleads his death and then we live.”