So Jack lingered on, hovering around the fragrant smell like a fly round a honey-pot, till he found himself invisibly attracted, and as it were led by the nose out of the passage into the adjoining room, and to that side of the room where there was a door; and once there he could not help hearing what passed inside; till Rose Salterne’s name fell on his ear.  So, as it was ordained, he was taken in the fact.  And now behold him brought in red-hand to judgment, not without a kick or two from the wrathful foot of Amyas Leigh.  Whereat there fell on him a storm of abuse, which, for the honor of that gallant company, I shall not give in detail; but which abuse, strange to say, seemed to have no effect on the impenitent and unabashed Jack, who, as soon as he could get his breath, made answer fiercely, amid much puffing and blowing.

“What business have I here?  As much as any of you.  If you had asked me in, I would have come:  but as you didn’t, I came without asking.”

“You shameless rascal!” said Cary.  “Come if you were asked, where there was good wine?  I’ll warrant you for that!”

“Why,” said Amyas, “no lad ever had a cake at school but he would dog him up one street and down another all day for the crumbs, the trencher-scraping spaniel!”

“Patience, masters!” said Frank.  “That Jack’s is somewhat of a gnathonic and parasitic soul, or stomach, all Bideford apple-women know; but I suspect more than Deus Venter has brought him hither.”

“Deus eavesdropping, then.  We shall have the whole story over the town by to-morrow,” said another; beginning at that thought to feel somewhat ashamed of his late enthusiasm.

“Ah, Mr. Frank!  You were always the only one that would stand up for me!  Deus Venter, quotha?  ’Twas Deus Cupid, it was!”

A roar of laughter followed this announcement.

“What?” asked Frank; “was it Cupid, then, who sneezed approval to our love, Jack, as he did to that of Dido and Aeneas?”

But Jack went on desperately.

“I was in the next room, drinking of my beer.  I couldn’t help that, could I?  And then I heard her name; and I couldn’t help listening then.  Flesh and blood couldn’t.”

“Nor fat either!”

“No, nor fat, Mr. Cary.  Do you suppose fat men haven’t souls to be saved as well as thin ones, and hearts to burst, too, as well as stomachs?  Fat!  Fat can feel, I reckon, as well as lean.  Do you suppose there’s naught inside here but beer?”

And he laid his hand, as Drayton might have said, on that stout bastion, hornwork, ravelin, or demilune, which formed the outworks to the citadel of his purple isle of man.

“Naught but beer?—­Cheese, I suppose?”

“Bread?”

“Beef?”

“Love!” cried Jack.  “Yes, Love!—­Ay, you laugh; but my eyes are not so grown up with fat but what I can see what’s fair as well as you.”

“Oh, Jack, naughty Jack, dost thou heap sin on sin, and luxury on gluttony?”