“I hope your nag has a strong back, then,” said Amyas; “but I must go on and see Sir Richard, Frank.  It is all very well to jest as we have been doing, but my mind is made up.”

“Stop,” said Cary.  “You must stay here tonight; first, for good fellowship’s sake; and next, because I want the advice of our Phoenix here, our oracle, our paragon.  There, Mr. Frank, can you construe that for me?  Speak low, though, gentlemen both; there comes my father; you had better give me the letter again.  Well, father, whence this morning?”

“Eh, company here?  Young men, you are always welcome, and such as you.  Would there were more of your sort in these dirty times!  How is your good mother, Frank, eh?  Where have I been, Will?  Round the house-farm, to look at the beeves.  That sheeted heifer of Prowse’s is all wrong; her coat stares like a hedgepig’s.  Tell Jewell to go up and bring her in before night.  And then up the forty acres; sprang two coveys, and picked a leash out of them.  The Irish hawk flies as wild as any haggard still, and will never make a bird.  I had to hand her to Tom, and take the little peregrine.  Give me a Clovelly hawk against the world, after all; and—­heigh ho, I am very hungry!  Half-past twelve, and dinner not served?  What, Master Amyas, spoiling your appetite with strong ale?  Better have tried sack, lad; have some now with me.”

And the worthy old gentleman, having finished his oration, settled himself on a great bench inside the chimney, and put his hawk on a perch over his head, while his cockers coiled themselves up close to the warm peat-ashes, and his son set to work to pull off his father’s boots, amid sundry warnings to take care of his corns.

“Come, Master Amyas, a pint of white wine and sugar, and a bit of a shoeing-horn to it ere we dine.  Some pickled prawns, now, or a rasher off the coals, to whet you?”

“Thank you,” quoth Amyas; “but I have drunk a mort of outlandish liquors, better and worse, in the last three years, and yet never found aught to come up to good ale, which needs neither shoeing-horn before nor after, but takes care of itself, and of all honest stomachs too, I think.”

“You speak like a book, boy,” said old Cary; “and after all, what a plague comes of these newfangled hot wines, and aqua vitaes, which have come in since the wars, but maddening of the brains, and fever of the blood?”

“I fear we have not seen the end of that yet,” said Frank.  “My friends write me from the Netherlands that our men are falling into a swinish trick of swilling like the Hollanders.  Heaven grant that they may not bring home the fashion with them.”

“A man must drink, they say, or die of the ague, in those vile swamps,” said Amyas.  “When they get home here, they will not need it.”

“Heaven grant it,” said Frank; “I should be sorry to see Devonshire a drunken county; and there are many of our men out there with Mr. Champernoun.”