“God forbid, Frank!”

“Why, then?  Is not the West the land of peace, and the land of dreams?  Do not our hearts tell us so each time we look upon the setting sun, and long to float away with him upon the golden-cushioned clouds?  They bury men with their faces to the East.  I should rather have mine turned to the West, Amyas, when I die; for I cannot but think it some divine instinct which made the ancient poets guess that Elysium lay beneath the setting sun.  It is bound up in the heart of man, that longing for the West.  I complain of no one for fleeing away thither beyond the utmost sea, as David wished to flee, and be at peace.”

“Complain of no one for fleeing thither?” asked Amyas.  “That is more than I do.”

Frank looked inquiringly at him; and then—­

“No.  If I had complained of any one, it would have been of you just now, for seeming to be tired of going Westward-ho.”

“Do you wish me to go, then?”

“God knows,” said Frank, after a moment’s pause.  “But I must tell you now, I suppose, once and for all.  That has happened at Bideford which—­”

“Spare us both, Frank; I know all.  I came through Bideford on my way hither; and came hither not merely to see you and my mother, but to ask your advice and her permission.”

“True heart! noble heart!” cried Frank.  “I knew you would be stanch!”

“Westward-ho it is, then?”

“Can we escape?”

“We?”

“Amyas, does not that which binds you bind me?”

Amyas started back, and held Frank by the shoulders at arm’s length; as he did so, he could feel through, that his brother’s arms were but skin and bone.

“You?  Dearest man, a month of it would kill you!”

Frank smiled, and tossed his head on one side in his pretty way.

“I belong to the school of Thales, who held that the ocean is the mother of all life; and feel no more repugnance at returning to her bosom again than Humphrey Gilbert did.”

“But, Frank,—­my mother?”

“My mother knows all; and would not have us unworthy of her.”

“Impossible!  She will never give you up!”

“All things are possible to them that believe in God, my brother; and she believes.  But, indeed, Doctor Dee, the wise man, gave her but this summer I know not what of prognostics and diagnostics concerning me.  I am born, it seems, under a cold and watery planet, and need, if I am to be long-lived, to go nearer to the vivifying heat of the sun, and there bask out my little life, like fly on wall.  To tell truth, he has bidden me spend no more winters here in the East; but return to our native sea-breezes, there to warm my frozen lungs; and has so filled my mother’s fancy with stories of sick men, who were given up for lost in Germany and France, and yet renewed their youth, like any serpent or eagle, by going to Italy, Spain, and the Canaries, that she herself will be more ready to let me go than I to