Sir Walter’s good fortune, however, had not turned his head, nor in the least diverted him from the main cherished ambition of his life, which was to wrest the empire of the New World from the Spaniard, and lay it, with all its potentialities for colonisation, at his brave England’s feet. During the year before he had partly financed the unfortunate expedition in which Sir Humphrey Gilbert perished; during this he had associated himself with an enterprise for the discovery of the North-West passage. In the meantime, having obtained from the Queen a patent of liberty to discover and seize, if might be, ‘any remote heathen and barbarous lands not actually possessed by any Christian Prince, nor inhabited by Christian people,’ with licence to inhabit and fortify the same, and leave to carry with him ‘such of our subjects’ as, in short, cared to go, he set to preparing joyfully for the venture so long projected, and at last come within the sphere of practical policy. He first, however, despatched a provisional expedition of two vessels, fitted at his own expense, which going and returning in safety, and reporting favourably upon the country and their reception therein, the main business was forthwith put definitely in hand, and arrangements made for a fleet of seven sail to start from Plymouth in the following April. And it was to this expedition that Brion had positively committed himself, and to discuss which he had accepted his friend’s invitation to a meeting in London. He was sorry to discover at the outset that Raleigh himself--being too greatly engaged over matters of divers import, and perhaps fearing that his enemies might take advantage of his absence to bring about his overthrow--was not to accompany his own enterprise; and still more so to learn that the command thereof was to be entrusted to Sir Richard Grenville, about whom he retained no very cordial memories, and who, indeed, as he had heard, possessed the reputation for being a rough and violent leader, much feared and hated by his own men. However, he had given his undertaking, from which, as a gentleman, he could not recede; and so he must make the best of it, and that was all the matter. And, indeed, when he came, as he did, to renew at Durham House the acquaintance of the obstreperous Sheriff, he found himself in some measure called on to revise his estimate of him, so inexplicably, if gruffly, genial did he find the great man to be with him--an attitude for which he could find no explanation but in Raleigh’s friendship, though in truth it was a testimony to the way in which, on that first occasion, he had prepossessed the surly visitor in his favour.