“How can I have heard?  What?”

“That he’s gone off, the villain?”

“Without paying his ransom?”

“I can’t say that; but there’s a poor innocent young maid gone off with him, one Salterne’s daughter—­the Popish serpent!”

“Rose Salterne, the mayor’s daughter, the Rose of Torridge!”

“That’s her.  Bless your dear soul, what ails you?”

Amyas had dropped back in his seat as if he had been shot; but he recovered himself before kind Mrs. Hawkins could rush to the cupboard for cordials.

“You’ll forgive me, madam; but I’m weak from the sea; and your good ale has turned me a bit dizzy, I think.”

“Ay, yes, ’tis too, too heavy, till you’ve been on shore a while.  Try the aqua vitae; my Captain John has it right good; and a bit too fond of it too, poor dear soul, between whiles, Heaven forgive him!”

So she poured some strong brandy and water down Amyas’s throat, in spite of his refusals, and sent him to bed, but not to sleep; and after a night of tossing, he started for Bideford, having obtained the means for so doing from Mrs. Hawkins.

CHAPTER XIV

HOW SALVATION YEO SLEW THE KING OF THE GUBBINGS

     “Ignorance and evil, even in full flight, deal terrible backhanded
     strokes at their pursuers.”—­Helps.

Now I am sorry to say, for the honor of my country, that it was by no means a safe thing in those days to travel from Plymouth to the north of Devon; because, to get to your journey’s end, unless you were minded to make a circuit of many miles, you must needs pass through the territory of a foreign and hostile potentate, who had many times ravaged the dominions, and defeated the forces of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, and was named (behind his back at least) the King of the Gubbings.  “So now I dare call them,” says Fuller, “secured by distance, which one of more valor durst not do to their face, for fear their fury fall upon him.  Yet hitherto have I met with none who could render a reason of their name.  We call the shavings of fish (which are little worth) gubbings; and sure it is that they are sensible that the word importeth shame and disgrace.

“As for the suggestion of my worthy and learned friend, Mr. Joseph Maynard, that such as did inhabitare montes gibberosos, were called Gubbings, such will smile at the ingenuity who dissent from the truth of the etymology.

“I have read of an England beyond Wales, but the Gubbings land is a Scythia within England, and they pure heathens therein.  It lieth nigh Brent.  For in the edge of Dartmoor it is reported that, some two hundred years since, two bad women, being with child, fled thither to hide themselves; to whom certain lewd fellows resorted, and this was their first original.  They are a peculiar of their own making, exempt from bishop, archdeacon, and all authority, either ecclesiastical