[H] This incident, which is strictly historical, even to the smallest details, did in fact occur several years earlier; as the death of Elizabeth did not take place until the year 1603, whereas the triumphant return of Thomas Cavendish is related by Hume as having happened A. D. 1587. It is hoped that the anachronism will be pardoned, in behalf of the picture of the times afforded by its introduction. The sick woman had been for weeks wasting away beneath a slow and painful malady; her strength had failed her, and for days her end had been almost hourly expected. Still, with that strange and unnatural tenacity through which the dying sometimes cling to earth, even after every rational hope of a day’s prolonged existence has been extinguished--she had hovered as it were on the confines of life and death, the vital flame flickering like that of a lamp whose aliment has long since been exhausted, fitfully playing about the wick which can no longer support it. Her reason, which had been partially obscured during the latter period of her malady, had been restored to its full vigor on the preceding evening; but the only fruit of its restoration was the utmost anguish of mental suffering and conscientious remorse. From the moment when the messenger, whose arrival we have already witnessed, had been despatched on his nocturnal mission, she had passed the time in fearful struggles with the last foe, wrestling as it were bodily with the dark angel; now pleading with the Almighty, and adjuring him by her sufferings and by her very sins, to spare her yet a little while; now shrieking on the name of Elizabeth, and calling her, as she valued her soul’s salvation, to make no long tarrying. In the opinion of the leeches who watched around her pillow, and of the terrified preacher who communed with his own heart and was still, her life was kept up only by this fierce and feverish excitement. At a glance she recognised the queen, before another eye had marked her entrance. “Ha!” she groaned, in deep, sepulchral tones, “she is come, before whose coming my guilty soul had not the power to pass away! She is come to witness the damnation of an immortal spirit! to hear a tale of sin and sorrow that has no parallel! Hear my words, O queen! hear my words now, and laugh--laugh if you can; for, by Him who made us both, and is now dealing with me according to my merits, never shall you laugh again! Hereafter you shall groan, and weep, and tremble, and curse yourself, as I do! Laugh, I say, Elizabeth of England--laugh now, or never laugh again!” For a moment the spirit of the queen, manly and strong as it was, beyond perhaps all precedent, was fairly overawed and cowed by the fierce intensity of the dying woman’s manner. Not long, however, could that proud soul quail to any created thing. “’Fore God, woman,” she cried, “thou art bewitched, or desperately wicked! What, in the fiend’s name, mean ye?”