“If you do begin laughing at me too, Mr. Leigh ——­” said the giant’s clock-face, in a piteous tone.

“I laugh not.  Art thou not Ordulf the earl, and I thy humblest squire?  Speak up, my lord; your cousin, my Lady Bath, commands you.”

And at last the giant began:—­

     “A giant I, Earl Ordulf men me call,—­
     ’Gainst Paynim foes Devonia’s champion tall;
     In single fight six thousand Turks I slew;
     Pull’d off a lion’s head, and ate it too: 
     With one shrewd blow, to let St. Edward in,
     I smote the gates of Exeter in twain;
     Till aged grown, by angels warn’d in dream,
     I built an abbey fair by Tavy stream. 
     But treacherous time hath tripped my glories up,
     The stanch old hound must yield to stancher pup;
     Here’s one so tall as I, and twice so bold,
     Where I took only cuffs, takes good red gold. 
     From pole to pole resound his wondrous works,
     Who slew more Spaniards than I e’er slew Turks;
     I strode across the Tavy stream:  but he
     Strode round the world and back; and here ’a be!”

“Oh, bathos!” said Lady Bath, while the ’prentices shouted applause.  “Is this hedge-bantling to be fathered on you, Mr. Frank?”

“It is necessary, by all laws of the drama, madam,” said Frank, with a sly smile, “that the speech and the speaker shall fit each other.  Pass on, Earl Ordulf; a more learned worthy waits.”

Whereon, up came a fresh member of the procession; namely, no less a person than Vindex Brimblecombe, the ancient schoolmaster, with five-and-forty boys at his heels, who halting, pulled out his spectacles, and thus signified his forgiveness of his whilom broken head:—­

“That the world should have been circumnavigated, ladies and gentles, were matter enough of jubilation to the student of Herodotus and Plato, Plinius and ——­ ahem! much more when the circumnavigators are Britons; more, again, when Damnonians.”

“Don’t swear, master,” said young Will Cary.

“Gulielme Cary, Gulielme Cary, hast thou forgotten thy—­”

“Whippings?  Never, old lad!  Go on; but let not the license of the scholar overtop the modesty of the Christian.”

“More again, as I said, when, incolae, inhabitants of Devon; but, most of all, men of Bideford school.  Oh renowned school!  Oh schoolboys ennobled by fellowship with him!  Oh most happy pedagogue, to whom it has befallen to have chastised a circumnavigator, and, like another Chiron, trained another Hercules:  yet more than Hercules, for he placed his pillars on the ocean shore, and then returned; but my scholar’s voyage—­”

“Hark how the old fox is praising himself all along on the sly,” said Cary.

“Mr. William, Mr. William, peace;—­silentium, my graceless pupil.  Urge the foaming steed, and strike terror into the rapid stag, but meddle not with matters too high for thee.”