In the autumn of that year my lord came back, and in my joy at seeing him again I hardly felt that he was sad. The Lord Essex had prevailed against him with the Queen and he was returned to exile, although one of his ships had brought in a Spanish galleon worth fifty thousand pounds. It must be remembered of him that his passion for discovering the unknown worlds swallowed up all the treasure he was able to discover; so that the sea was never without his ships, and one expedition but led to another. Had he been differently framed this season at Youghall had been happy enough. For now there was no fighting to be done he led that quiet and pastoral life which might have won him Master Spenser’s title for him, _The Shepherd of the Ocean_. He delighted himself by planting the strange seeds and roots he had brought from the ends of the earth and seeing them thrive. All his garden ventures were fortunate. The kindly Irish soil suited well with the tobacco, the myrtle, and the fuchsia. At Affane, a little way up the Blackwater, he had his orchards, where already the cherry grew abundantly. There, also, on sunny banks, he sowed in long rows a strange fruit called the potato, whereof the fruit is in the earth, and the leaves above it, and a very pleasant fruit to eat when well boiled, being of a sweet flouriness within. Another fruit from the Indies which he planted at Affane was called the tomato—a great, smooth-skinned, scarlet fruit, over-heavy for its branches, and of a strange half-sour flavor, which yet grew on one in the eating. Another seed brought him by his captains was that of the clove-gilly-flower, or wall-flower, a most sweet-smelling plant; and the cedar also he planted. He was as much set upon gardens as upon adventure and the search for new countries. Those of his captains who had returned had brought with them charts of the lands in which they had sailed, together with long reports concerning the inhabitants, their manner of living, their food and pursuits, the beasts and birds, the plants and ore, and all such matters; over which my lord would sit and pore in the long winter evenings, by the fire of driftwood, and smoking his long pipe. And sometimes he would talk with Master Spenser concerning them; but more often their talk ran on poetry and the arts. Master Spenser was working at the later books of _The Faëry Queen_, and had written also a very pretty pastoral entitled _Colin Clout’s Come Home Again_. Nor was my lord’s admirable pen silent. I went to and fro almost as a son; and I can see my lord now in some gallant apparel, for he knew not what it was to be slovenly, leaning back in his great chair, and reading from the manuscript in his hand that lament he made for the death of the stainless knight, Sir Philip Sidney, slain then at the battle of Zutphen: