“Let him be, then,” said Amyas; “he could stand very well by himself, when I saw him last.”

“Plague on you, hold your tongue.  Has he any right to look at me as he does, whenever I pass him?”

“That depends on how he looks; a cat may look at a king, provided she don’t take him for a mouse.”

“Oh, I know how he looks, and what he means too, and he shall stop, or I will stop him.  And the other day, when I spoke of Rose Salterne”—­“Ah!” groaned Frank, “Ate’s apple again!”—­“(never mind what I said) he burst out laughing in my face; and is not that a fair quarrel?  And what is more, I know that he wrote a sonnet, and sent it to her to Stow by a market woman.  What right has he to write sonnets when I can’t?  It’s not fair play, Mr. Frank, or I am a Jew, and a Spaniard, and a Papist; it’s not!” And Will smote the table till the plates danced again.

“My dear knight of the burning pestle, I have a plan, a device, a disentanglement, according to most approved rules of chivalry.  Let us fix a day, and summon by tuck of drum all young gentlemen under the age of thirty, dwelling within fifteen miles of the habitation of that peerless Oriana.”

“And all ’prentice-boys too,” cried Amyas, out of the pasty.

“And all ’prentice-boys.  The bold lads shall fight first, with good quarterstaves, in Bideford Market, till all heads are broken; and the head which is not broken, let the back belonging to it pay the penalty of the noble member’s cowardice.  After which grand tournament, to which that of Tottenham shall be but a flea-bite and a batrachomyomachy—­”

“Confound you, and your long words, sir,” said poor Will, “I know you are flouting me.”

“Pazienza, Signor Cavaliere; that which is to come is no flouting, but bloody and warlike earnest.  For afterwards all the young gentlemen shall adjourn into a convenient field, sand, or bog—­which last will be better, as no man will be able to run away, if he be up to his knees in soft peat:  and there stripping to our shirts, with rapiers of equal length and keenest temper, each shall slay his man, catch who catch can, and the conquerors fight again, like a most valiant main of gamecocks as we are, till all be dead, and out of their woes; after which the survivor, bewailing before heaven and earth the cruelty of our Fair Oriana, and the slaughter which her basiliscine eyes have caused, shall fall gracefully upon his sword, and so end the woes of this our lovelorn generation.  Placetne Domini? as they used to ask in the Senate at Oxford.”

“Really,” said Cary, “this is too bad.”

“So is, pardon me, your fighting Mr. Coffin with anything longer than a bodkin.”

“Bodkins are too short for such fierce Bobadils,” said Amyas; “they would close in so near, that we should have them falling to fisticuffs after the first bout.”

“Then let them fight with squirts across the market-place; for by heaven and the queen’s laws, they shall fight with nothing else.”