“But I didn’t let the cur bark; for I took him by the ears, to show him out into the street.  Whereon he got to his sword, and I to mine; and a very near chance I had of never bathing on the pebble ridge more; for the fellow did not fight with edge and buckler, like a Christian, but had some newfangled French devil’s device of scryming and foining with his point, ha’ing and stamping, and tracing at me, that I expected to be full of eyelet holes ere I could close with him.”

“Thank God that you are safe, then!” said Frank.  “I know that play well enough, and dangerous enough it is.”

“Of course you know it; but I didn’t, more’s the pity.”

“Well, I’ll teach it thee, lad, as well as Rowland Yorke himself,

     ’Thy fincture, carricade, and sly passata,
     Thy stramazon, and resolute stoccata,
     Wiping maudritta, closing embrocata,
     And all the cant of the honorable fencing mystery.’”

“Rowland Yorke?  Who’s he, then?”

“A very roystering rascal, who is making good profit in London just now by teaching this very art of fence; and is as likely to have his mortal thread clipt in a tavern brawl, as thy Frenchman.  But how did you escape his pinking iron?”

“How?  Had it through my left arm before I could look round; and at that I got mad, and leapt upon him, and caught him by the wrist, and then had a fair side-blow; and, as fortune would have it, off tumbled his head on to the table, and there was an end of his slanders.”

“So perish all her enemies!” said Frank; and Eustace, who had been trying not to listen, rose and said—­

“I trust that you do not number me among them?”

“As you speak, I do, coz,” said Frank.  “But for your own sake, let me advise you to put faith in the true report of those who have daily experience of their mistress’s excellent virtue, as they have of the sun’s shining, and of the earth’s bringing forth fruit, and not in the tattle of a few cowardly back-stair rogues, who wish to curry favor with the Guises.  Come, we will say no more.  Walk round with us by Appledore, and then home to breakfast.”

But Eustace declined, having immediate business, he said, in Northam town, and then in Bideford; and so left them to lounge for another half-hour on the beach, and then walk across the smooth sheet of turf to the little white fishing village, which stands some two miles above the bar, at the meeting of the Torridge and the Taw.

Now it came to pass, that Eustace Leigh, as we have seen, told his cousins that he was going to Northam:  but he did not tell them that his point was really the same as their own, namely, Appledore; and, therefore, after having satisfied his conscience by going as far as the very nearest house in Northam village, he struck away sharp to the left across the fields, repeating I know not what to the Blessed Virgin all the way; whereby he went several miles out of his road; and