also, as is the wont of crooked spirits, Jesuits especially (as three centuries sufficiently testify), only outwitted himself.  For his cousins going merrily, like honest men, along the straight road across the turf, arrived in Appledore, opposite the little “Mariner’s Rest” Inn, just in time to see what Eustace had taken so much trouble to hide from them, namely, four of Mr. Thomas Leigh’s horses standing at the door, held by his groom, saddles and mail-bags on back, and mounting three of them, Eustace Leigh and two strange gentlemen.

“There’s one lie already this morning,” growled Amyas; “he told us he was going to Northam.”

“And we do not know that he has not been there,” blandly suggested Frank.

“Why, you are as bad a Jesuit as he, to help him out with such a fetch.”

“He may have changed his mind.”

“Bless your pure imagination, my sweet boy,” said Amyas, laying his great hand on Frank’s head, and mimicking his mother’s manner.  “I say, dear Frank, let’s step into this shop and buy a penny-worth of whipcord.”

“What do you want with whipcord, man?”

“To spin my top, to be sure.”

“Top? how long hast had a top?”

“I’ll buy one, then, and save my conscience; but the upshot of this sport I must see.  Why may not I have an excuse ready made as well as Master Eustace?”

So saying, he pulled Frank into the little shop, unobserved by the party at the inn-door.

“What strange cattle has he been importing now?  Look at that three-legged fellow, trying to get aloft on the wrong side.  How he claws at his horse’s ribs, like a cat scratching an elder stem!”

The three-legged man was a tall, meek-looking person, who had bedizened himself with gorgeous garments, a great feather, and a sword so long and broad, that it differed little in size from the very thin and stiff shanks between which it wandered uncomfortably.

“Young David in Saul’s weapons,” said Frank.  “He had better not go in them, for he certainly has not proved them.”

“Look, if his third leg is not turned into a tail!  Why does not some one in charity haul in half-a-yard of his belt for him?”

It was too true; the sword, after being kicked out three or four times from its uncomfortable post between his legs, had returned unconquered; and the hilt getting a little too far back by reason of the too great length of the belt, the weapon took up its post triumphantly behind, standing out point in air, a tail confest, amid the tittering of the ostlers, and the cheers of the sailors.

At last the poor man, by dint of a chair, was mounted safely, while his fellow-stranger, a burly, coarse-looking man, equally gay, and rather more handy, made so fierce a rush at his saddle, that, like “vaulting ambition who o’erleaps his selle,” he “fell on t’other side:”  or would have fallen, had he not been brought up short by the shoulders of the ostler at his off-stirrup.  In which shock off came hat and feather.