“Hold! His cloak? God’s grace! It hangs--hang him, I say! So I picture him--all but the cloak. It was here we sat together, in this green arbour, but a year ago. Just home from bloody Ireland was he, yet as white and cool as swan’s-down. We were here, I say, we two, in this very spot, and the Court at Pleazaunce. The Queen was in her barge on the river. We saw her pass, and the rogue’s eyes dreamed. Some caprice--some premonition belike--engaged her Majesty to land at the common steps yonder. They were wet and foul, the morning having rained, and, perceiving his chance, my comrade snatched up cloak, and leaped and joined the throng that hovered on the royal advent. I came more leisurely behind, and saw the pretty Queen mount up and hesitate, pursing her lips in comical dismay before a pool of mud. And then, all in a moment--but you’ve heard the story?” “He spread his cloak for her to step on?” “Damn him!” “Why so?” “It was _my_ cloak, that was all--new green velvet, and home that morning from the cutter’s. Own him now a thief of opportunity.” Mr. Sidney and Mr. Greville looked at one another gravely a moment, then burst into a shout of laughter. Marlowe “Prithee, Kit, pay me the pound you owe me.” Mr. Christopher Marlowe, Master of Arts, playwright and rakehell, sprawled his arms upon the tavern table, and leered inebriously across it at the speaker. Behind him an open red lattice gave upon a sunny street alive with swarthy gold-ear-ringed mariners; before his sleepy eyes glowed, framed in the end of a black passage, like a picture in a diorama, a square of green banks and flashing waters webbed with rigging. The waters were the waters of Deptford Creek, and the tackle, or at least part of it, belonged to Drake’s ship, the _Golden Hind_, already, in this June of the year 1593, laid by for perpetuity at her Majesty’s command, as a memorial of her nation’s characteristic prowess. Marlowe tinkled with his fingers an empty flagon on the table. “A pound, Frank Archer?” quoth he in a slurred derisive voice. “Listen here--as empty as my pocket or your head. An I had a pound, I should know better what to do with it.”