to each other till the wine should have loosened their tongues and warmed their hearts.  In the meanwhile both Amyas and Frank, ignoring the silence of their guests with the most provoking good-humor, chatted, and joked, and told stories, and made themselves such good company, that Will Cary, who always found merriment infectious, melted into a jest, and then into another, and finding good-humor far more pleasant than bad, tried to make Mr. Coffin laugh, and only made him bow, and to make Mr. Fortescue laugh, and only made him frown; and unabashed nevertheless, began playing his light artillery upon the waiters, till he drove them out of the room bursting with laughter.

So far so good.  And when the cloth was drawn, and sack and sugar became the order of the day, and “Queen and Bible” had been duly drunk with all the honors, Frank tried a fresh move, and—­

“I have a toast, gentlemen—­here it is.  ’The gentlemen of the Irish wars; and may Ireland never be without a St. Leger to stand by a Fortescue, a Fortescue to stand by a St. Leger, and a Chichester to stand by both.’”

Which toast of course involved the drinking the healths of the three representatives of those families, and their returning thanks, and paying a compliment each to the other’s house:  and so the ice cracked a little further; and young Fortescue proposed the health of “Amyas Leigh and all bold mariners;” to which Amyas replied by a few blunt kindly words, “that he wished to know no better fortune than to sail round the world again with the present company as fellow-adventurers, and so give the Spaniards another taste of the men of Devon.”

And by this time, the wine going down sweetly, caused the lips of them that were asleep to speak; till the ice broke up altogether, and every man began talking like a rational Englishman to the man who sat next him.

“And now, gentlemen,” said Frank, who saw that it was the fit moment for the grand assault which he had planned all along; “let me give you a health which none of you, I dare say, will refuse to drink with heart and soul as well as with lips;—­the health of one whom beauty and virtue have so ennobled, that in their light the shadow of lowly birth is unseen;—­the health of one whom I would proclaim as peerless in loveliness, were it not that every gentleman here has sisters, who might well challenge from her the girdle of Venus:  and yet what else dare I say, while those same lovely ladies who, if they but use their own mirrors, must needs be far better judges of beauty than I can be, have in my own hearing again and again assigned the palm to her?  Surely, if the goddesses decide among themselves the question of the golden apple, Paris himself must vacate the judgment-seat.  Gentlemen, your hearts, I doubt not, have already bid you, as my unworthy lips do now, to drink ‘The Rose of Torridge.’”