书城公版Westward Ho
37277900000011

第11章

Leger knew well that her husband's fiery spirit would never leave his body on a peaceful bed; but that death (as he prayed almost nightly that it might) would find him sword in hand, upon the field of duty and of fame.And there those two vowed everlasting sisterhood, and kept their vow; and after that all things went on at Burrough as before; and Amyas rode, and shot, and boxed, and wandered on the quay at Sir Richard's side; for Mrs.Leigh was too wise a woman to alter one tittle of the training which her husband had thought best for his younger boy.It was enough that her elder son had of his own accord taken to that form of life in which she in her secret heart would fain have moulded both her children.For Frank, God's wedding gift to that pure love of hers, had won himself honor at home and abroad; first at the school at Bideford;then at Exeter College, where he had become a friend of Sir Philip Sidney's, and many another young man of rank and promise; and next, in the summer of 1572, on his way to the University of Heidelberg, he had gone to Paris, with (luckily for him) letters of recommendation to Walsingham, at the English Embassy: by which letters he not only fell in a second time with Philip Sidney, but saved his own life (as Sidney did his) in the Massacre of St.