“Sin?  If I sin, you sin:  I tell you, and I don’t care who knows it, I’ve loved her these three years as well as e’er a one of you, I have.  I’ve thought o’ nothing else, prayed for nothing else, God forgive me!  And then you laugh at me, because I’m a poor parson’s son, and you fine gentlemen:  God made us both, I reckon.  You?—­you make a deal of giving her up to-day.  Why, it’s what I’ve done for three miserable years as ever poor sinner spent; ay, from the first day I said to myself, ’Jack, if you can’t have that pearl, you’ll have none; and that you can’t have, for it’s meat for your masters:  so conquer or die.’  And I couldn’t conquer.  I can’t help loving her, worshipping her, no more than you; and I will die:  but you needn’t laugh meanwhile at me that have done as much as you, and will do again.”

“It is the old tale,” said Frank to himself; “whom will not love transform into a hero?”

And so it was.  Jack’s squeaking voice was firm and manly, his pig’s eyes flashed very fire, his gestures were so free and earnest, that the ungainliness of his figure was forgotten; and when he finished with a violent burst of tears, Frank, forgetting his wounds, sprang up and caught him by the hand.

“John Brimblecombe, forgive me!  Gentlemen, if we are gentlemen, we ought to ask his pardon.  Has he not shown already more chivalry, more self-denial, and therefore more true love, than any of us?  My friends, let the fierceness of affection, which we have used as an excuse for many a sin of our own, excuse his listening to a conversation in which he well deserved to bear a part.”

“Ah,” said Jack, “you make me one of your brotherhood; and see if I do not dare to suffer as much as any of you!  You laugh?  Do you fancy none can use a sword unless he has a baker’s dozen of quarterings in his arms, or that Oxford scholars know only how to handle a pen?”

“Let us try his metal,” said St. Leger.  “Here’s my sword, Jack; draw, Coffin! and have at him.”

“Nonsense!” said Coffin, looking somewhat disgusted at the notion of fighting a man of Jack’s rank; but Jack caught at the weapon offered to him.

“Give me a buckler, and have at any of you!”

“Here’s a chair bottom,” cried Cary; and Jack, seizing it in his left, flourished his sword so fiercely, and called so loudly to Coffin to come on, that all present found it necessary, unless they wished blood to be spilt, to turn the matter off with a laugh:  but Jack would not hear of it.

“Nay:  if you will let me be of your brotherhood, well and good:  but if not, one or other I will fight:  and that’s flat.”

“You see, gentlemen,” said Amyas, “we must admit him or die the death; so we needs must go when Sir Urian drives.  Come up, Jack, and take the oaths.  You admit him, gentlemen?”

“Let me but be your chaplain,” said Jack, “and pray for your luck when you’re at the wars.  If I do stay at home in a country curacy, ’tis not much that you need be jealous of me with her, I reckon,” said Jack, with a pathetical glance at his own stomach.