“Free to be happy,” interrupted the man.  “With the best of wives, the best of food, a warmer bed than a duke’s, and a finer garden than an emperor’s.  As for clothes, why the plague should a man wear them where he don’t need them?  As for gold, what’s the use of it where Heaven sends everything ready-made to your hands?  Hearken, Captain Leigh.  You’ve been a good captain to me, and I’ll repay you with a bit of sound advice.  Give up your gold-hunting, and toiling and moiling after honor and glory, and copy us.  Take that fair maid behind you there to wife; pitch here with us; and see if you are not happier in one day than ever you were in all your life before.”

“You are drunk, sirrah!  William Parracombe!  Will you speak to me, or shall I heave you into the stream to sober you?”

“Who calls William Parracombe?” answered a sleepy voice.

“I, fool!—­your captain.”

“I am not William Parracombe.  He is dead long ago of hunger, and labor, and heavy sorrow, and will never see Bideford town any more.  He is turned into an Indian now; and he is to sleep, sleep, sleep for a hundred years, till he gets his strength again, poor fellow—­”

“Awake, then, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light!  A christened Englishman, and living thus the life of a beast?”

“Christ shall give thee light?” answered the same unnatural abstracted voice.  “Yes; so the parsons say.  And they say too, that He is Lord of heaven and earth.  I should have thought His light was as near us here as anywhere, and nearer too, by the look of the place.  Look round!” said he, waving a lazy hand, “and see the works of God, and the place of Paradise, whither poor weary souls go home and rest, after their masters in the wicked world have used them up, with labor and sorrow, and made them wade knee-deep in blood—­I’m tired of blood, and tired of gold.  I’ll march no more; I’ll fight no more; I’ll hunger no more after vanity and vexation of spirit.  What shall I get by it?  Maybe I shall leave my bones in the wilderness.  I can but do that here.  Maybe I shall get home with a few pezos, to die an old cripple in some stinking hovel, that a monkey would scorn to lodge in here.  You may go on; it’ll pay you.  You may be a rich man, and a knight, and live in a fine house, and drink good wine, and go to Court, and torment your soul with trying to get more, when you’ve got too much already; plotting and planning to scramble upon your neighbor’s shoulders, as they all did—­Sir Richard, and Mr. Raleigh, and Chichester, and poor dear old Sir Warham, and all of them that I used to watch when I lived before.  They were no happier than I was then; I’ll warrant they are no happier now.  Go your ways, captain; climb to glory upon some other backs than ours, and leave us here in peace, alone with God and God’s woods, and the good wives that God has given us, to play a little like school children.  It’s long since I’ve had