Sir Robert Cecil, as we have shown, was not always the possessor of

Cecil Place; and the secret of whatever course he had adopted, or crime

he had committed, to obtain such large possessions, was in the keeping

of Hugh Dalton.

Cromwell had not at all times watched as carefully over the private

transactions of individuals, as he was disposed to do during the later

years of his Protectorate. Persons obnoxious to the Commonwealth had

frequently disappeared; and though Oliver's system of espionage was

never surpassed, not even by Napoleon, the Cromwell of modern years, yet

it had been his policy to take little or no note of such matters:

uniting in himself the most extraordinary mixture of craft and heroism

that ever either disfigured or adorned the page of history.

Dalton and such men were no longer necessary to bear from the shores of

England the excrescences of royalty. Time, the sword, or stratagem had

greatly thinned their numbers; yet many recent events proved that

loyalists were imported, and assassins hired, and let loose in the

country by contraband ships; until, at length, the Protector was roused,

and resolved to check the pirates and smugglers of our English strands,

as effectually as the gallant and right noble Blake had exterminated

them on the open sea.

No one was better acquainted with the character, the deeds, and misdeeds

of Hugh Dalton, than the all-seeing Cromwell; and so firm a heart as the

Protector's could not but marvel at and admire, even though he could

neither approve nor sanction, the bravery of the Fire-fly's commander.

Dalton knew this, and, in endeavouring to obtain an authorised ship,

acted according to such knowledge. He felt that Cromwell would never

pardon him, unless he could make him useful; a few cruises in a

registered vessel, and then peace and Barbara, was his concluding

thought, whilst, resting on his oars, he looked upon his beautiful

brigantine, as she rode upon the waters at a long distance yet, the

heavens spangled with innumerable stars for her canopy, and the ocean,

the wide unfathomable ocean, spreading from pole to pole, circling the

round earth as with a girdle, for her dominion.

It was one of those evenings that seem "breathless with adoration;" the

gentleness of heaven was on the sea; there was not a line, not a ripple

on the wide waste of waters; "the winds," to use again the poet's

eloquent words, "were up, gathered like sleeping flowers." There was no

light in the vessel's bow--no twinkle from the shore--no ship in

sight--nothing that told of existence but his own Fire-fly, couching on

the ocean like a sleeping bird.




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