“Do you hear?” roared Amyas, catching at him with his lion’s paw.

“Yes, missus; anon, anon, missus!” quoth he to an imaginary landlady inside, and twisting under Amyas’s hand like an eel, vanished into the house, while Frank got the hot-headed youth away.

“What a plague is one to do, then?  That fellow was a Papist spy!”

“Of course he was!” said Frank.

“Then, what is one to do, if the whole country is full of them?”

“Not to make fools of ourselves about them, and so leave them to make fools of themselves.”

“That’s all very fine:  but—­well, I shall remember the villain’s face if I see him again.”

“There is no harm in that,” said Frank.

“Glad you think so.”

“Don’t quarrel with me, Amyas, the first day.”

“Quarrel with thee, my darling old fellow!  I had sooner kiss the dust off thy feet, if I were worthy of it.  So now away home; my inside cries cupboard.”

In the meanwhile Messrs. Evans and Morgans were riding away, as fast as the rough by-lanes would let them, along the fresh coast of the bay, steering carefully clear of Northam town on the one hand, and on the other, of Portledge, where dwelt that most Protestant justice of the peace, Mr. Coffin.  And it was well for them that neither Amyas Leigh, nor indeed any other loyal Englishman, was by when they entered, as they shortly did, the lonely woods which stretch along the southern wall of the bay.  For there Eustace Leigh pulled up short; and both he and his groom, leaping from their horses, knelt down humbly in the wet grass, and implored the blessing of the two valiant gentlemen of Wales, who, having graciously bestowed it with three fingers apiece, became thenceforth no longer Morgan Evans and Evan Morgans, Welshmen and gentlemen; but Father Parsons and Father Gampian, Jesuits, and gentlemen in no sense in which that word is applied in this book.

After a few minutes, the party were again in motion, ambling steadily and cautiously along the high table-land, towards Moorwinstow in the west; while beneath them on the right, at the mouth of rich-wooded glens, opened vistas of the bright blue bay, and beyond it the sandhills of Braunton, and the ragged rocks of Morte; while far away to the north and west the lonely isle of Lundy hung like a soft gray cloud.

But they were not destined to reach their point as peaceably as they could have wished.  For just as they got opposite Clovelly dike, the huge old Roman encampment which stands about midway in their journey, they heard a halloo from the valley below, answered by a fainter one far ahead.  At which, like a couple of rogues (as indeed they were), Father Campian and Father Parsons looked at each other, and then both stared round at the wild, desolate, open pasture (for the country was then all unenclosed), and the great dark furze-grown banks above their heads; and Campian remarked gently to Parsons, that this was a very dreary spot, and likely enough for robbers.