Mrs. Leigh looked up, trembling; and Frank, he scarce knew why, rose.

“No; you pitch again.  You are King David, and sit still upon your throne.  David was a great singer, you know, and a player on the viols; and ruddy, too, and of a fair countenance; so that will fit.  Now, then, mother, don’t look so frightened.  I am not going to play Goliath, for all my cubits; I am to present Nathan the prophet.  Now, David, hearken, for I have a message unto thee, O King!

“There were two men in one city, one rich, and the other poor:  and the rich man had many flocks and herds, and all the fine ladies in Whitehall to court if he liked; and the poor man had nothing but—­”

And in spite of his broad honest smile, Amyas’s deep voice began to tremble and choke.

Frank sprang up, and burst into tears:  “Oh!  Amyas, my brother, my brother! stop!  I cannot endure this.  Oh, God! was it not enough to have entangled myself in this fatal fancy, but over and above, I must meet the shame of my brother’s discovering it?”

“What shame, then, I’d like to know?” said Amyas, recovering himself.  “Look here, brother Frank!  I’ve thought it all over in the garden; and I was an ass and a braggart for talking to you as I did last night.  Of course you love her!  Everybody must; and I was a fool for not recollecting that; and if you love her, your taste and mine agree, and what can be better?  I think you are a sensible fellow for loving her, and you think me one.  And as for who has her, why, you’re the eldest; and first come first served is the rule, and best to keep to it.  Besides, brother Frank, though I’m no scholar, yet I’m not so blind but that I tell the difference between you and me; and of course your chance against mine, for a hundred to one; and I am not going to be fool enough to row against wind and tide too.  I’m good enough for her, I hope; but if I am, you are better, and the good dog may run, but it’s the best that takes the hare; and so I have nothing more to do with the matter at all; and if you marry her, why, it will set the old house on its legs again, and that’s the first thing to be thought of, and you may just as well do it as I, and better too.  Not but that it’s a plague, a horrible plague!” went on Amyas, with a ludicrously doleful visage; “but so are other things too, by the dozen; it’s all in the day’s work, as the huntsman said when the lion ate him.  One would never get through the furze-croft if one stopped to pull out the prickles.  The pig didn’t scramble out of the ditch by squeaking; and the less said the sooner mended; nobody was sent into the world only to suck honey-pots.  What must be must, man is but dust; if you can’t get crumb, you must fain eat crust.  So I’ll go and join the army in Ireland, and get it out of my head, for cannon balls fright away love as well as poverty does; and that’s all I’ve got to say.”  Wherewith Amyas sat down, and returned to the beer; while Mrs. Leigh wept tears of joy.