The very soil he trod was fertile with the romance of war. For George was born in the heart of the country which bred the greatest of the Elizabethan heroes. The soldiers and sailors who most adorned the great Queen's age were living memories in his childhood, their exploits were the tales of his nursery, their names the first words he learnt to lisp. Hard by lived his aunt Grace, who had married the brilliant young Bevil Grenville, heir and grandson of the immortal Sir Richard himself. His aunt Elizabeth was wife to Luttrell of Hartland Abbey, and through her he could claim kinship with the Howards; while all around the home by Tor and Torridge were clustered the old North Devon families with whom Kingsley's undying romance has made us so familiar. Nor were these influences lessened as time went on. Sir George Smith took such a fancy to the fearless high-spirited boy that he one day offered to educate him if he might live half the year at Maydford. Poor embarrassed Sir Thomas could only consent, and George entered a new sphere of life even fuller of romance and adventure than the old. At Larkbere, within easy distance of his new home, lived Sir Nicholas Smith, Sir George's eldest son, where the lad found endless cousins to foster the dreams of Devon boyhood. But all his games and stories there were tame beside the attractions of his aunt Frances's house at Farringdon. For Frances Monk had married Sir Lewis Stukeley, Vice-Admiral of Devon, and there George must have found for a play-fellow little Tom Rolfe, the child of Pocahontas, whose guardian Stukeley had become since the Indian beauty's death. Sir Lewis, too, was a cousin and intimate friend of Raleigh himself, and George must have seen in the company of his uncle that latest born child of the sixteenth century and even heard his stirring adventures from his own lips. He would certainly have missed no opportunity of seeing the famous navigator. Raleigh was the hero of every lad with an English spirit or an ear for a tale. His _Discovery of Guiana_ was a book that was in every one's hands, and George and his cousins must have known by heart its wonderful stories of El Dorado and the Amazons. At any rate the lad was old enough to have witnessed with eager eyes the setting forth of Sir Walter's last expedition to find the land of gold; to have heard with sinking heart how his uncle Stukeley had gone forth to arrest the hero upon his disastrous return; to mourn with all England when Raleigh's head fell on Tower Hill, and to burn with shame and anger when he heard the cry of execration that rose against his uncle, the treacherous friend who betrayed the last of the Elizabethans.