“I thought thou wert there all along, being already half-seas over,” said Cary.

“Ay, right Upsee-Dutch; and that’s more than thou ever wilt be, thou ’long-shore stay-at-home.  Why wast making sheep’s eyes at Mistress Salterne here, while my pretty little chuck of Burrough there was playing at shove-groat with Spanish doubloons?”

“Go to the devil, sirrah!” said Cary.  Neptune had touched on a sore subject; and more cheeks than Amyas Leigh’s reddened at the hint.

“Amen, if Heaven so please!” and on rolled the monarch of the seas; and so the pageant ended.

The moment Amyas had an opportunity, he asked his brother Frank, somewhat peevishly, where Rose Salterne was.

“What! the mayor’s daughter?  With her uncle by Kilkhampton, I believe.”

Now cunning Master Frank, whose daily wish was to “seek peace and ensue it,” told Amyas this, because he must needs speak the truth:  but he was purposed at the same time to speak as little truth as he could, for fear of accidents; and, therefore, omitted to tell his brother how that he, two days before, had entreated Rose Salterne herself to appear as the nymph of Torridge; which honor she, who had no objection either to exhibit her pretty face, to recite pretty poetry, or to be trained thereto by the cynosure of North Devon, would have assented willingly, but that her father stopped the pretty project by a peremptory countermove, and packed her off, in spite of her tears, to the said uncle on the Atlantic cliffs; after which he went up to Burrough, and laughed over the whole matter with Mrs. Leigh.

“I am but a burgher, Mrs. Leigh, and you a lady of blood; but I am too proud to let any man say that Simon Salterne threw his daughter at your son’s head;—­no; not if you were an empress!”

“And to speak truth, Mr. Salterne, there are young gallants enough in the country quarrelling about her pretty face every day, without making her a tourney-queen to tilt about.”

Which was very true; for during the three years of Amyas’s absence, Rose Salterne had grown into so beautiful a girl of eighteen, that half North Devon was mad about the “Rose of Torridge,” as she was called; and there was not a young gallant for ten miles round (not to speak of her father’s clerks and ’prentices, who moped about after her like so many Malvolios, and treasured up the very parings of her nails) who would not have gone to Jerusalem to win her.  So that all along the vales of Torridge and of Taw, and even away to Clovelly (for young Mr. Cary was one of the sick), not a gay bachelor but was frowning on his fellows, and vying with them in the fashion of his clothes, the set of his ruffs, the harness of his horse, the carriage of his hawks, the pattern of his sword-hilt; and those were golden days for all tailors and armorers, from Exmoor to Okehampton town.  But of all those foolish young lads not one would speak to the other, either out hunting, or at the archery butts, or in the tilt-yard;