So Mr. Frank was arrayed spotlessly; but after the latest fashion of Milan, not in trunk hose and slashed sleeves, nor in “French standing collar, treble quadruple daedalian ruff, or stiff-necked rabato, that had more arches for pride, propped up with wire and timber, than five London Bridges;” but in a close-fitting and perfectly plain suit of dove-color, which set off cunningly the delicate proportions of his figure, and the delicate hue of his complexion, which was shaded from the sun by a broad dove-colored Spanish hat, with feather to match, looped up over the right ear with a pearl brooch, and therein a crowned E, supposed by the damsels of Bideford to stand for Elizabeth, which was whispered to be the gift of some most illustrious hand. This same looping up was not without good reason and purpose prepense; thereby all the world had full view of a beautiful little ear, which looked as if it had been cut of cameo, and made, as my Lady Rich once told him, “to hearken only to the music of the spheres, or to the chants of cherubim.” Behind the said ear was stuck a fresh rose; and the golden hair was all drawn smoothly back and round to the left temple, whence, tied with a pink ribbon in a great true lover’s knot, a mighty love-lock, “curled as it had been laid in press,” rolled down low upon his bosom. Oh, Frank! Frank! have you come out on purpose to break the hearts of all Bideford burghers’ daughters? And if so, did you expect to further that triumph by dyeing that pretty little pointed beard (with shame I report it) of a bright vermilion? But we know you better, Frank, and so does your mother; and you are but a masquerading angel after all, in spite of your knots and your perfumes, and the gold chain round your neck which a German princess gave you; and the emerald ring on your right fore-finger which Hatton gave you; and the pair of perfumed gloves in your left which Sidney’s sister gave you; and the silver-hilted Toledo which an Italian marquis gave you on a certain occasion of which you never choose to talk, like a prudent and modest gentleman as you are; but of which the gossips talk, of course, all the more, and whisper that you saved his life from bravoes—a dozen, at the least; and had that sword for your reward, and might have had his beautiful sister’s hand beside, and I know not what else; but that you had so many lady-loves already that you were loath to burden yourself with a fresh one. That, at least, we know to be a lie, fair Frank; for your heart is as pure this day as when you knelt in your little crib at Burrough, and said—

 
     “Four corners to my bed
     Four angels round my head;
     Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
     Bless the bed that I lie on.”
 

And who could doubt it (if being pure themselves, they have instinctive sympathy with what is pure), who ever looked into those great deep blue eyes of yours, “the black fringed curtains of whose azure lids,” usually down-dropt as if in deepest thought, you raise slowly, almost wonderingly each time you speak, as if awakening from some fair dream whose home is rather in your platonical “eternal world of supra-sensible forms,” than on that work-day earth wherein you nevertheless acquit yourself so well? There—I must stop describing you, or I shall catch the infection of your own euphuism, and talk of you as you would have talked of Sidney or of Spenser, or of that Swan of Avon, whose song had just begun when yours—but I will not anticipate; my Lady Bath is waiting to give you her rejoinder.

“Ah, my silver-tongued scholar! and are you, then, the poet? or have you been drawing on the inexhaustible bank of your friend Raleigh, or my cousin Sidney? or has our new Cygnet Immerito lent you a few unpublished leaves from some fresh Shepherd’s Calendar?”

“Had either, madam, of that cynosural triad been within call of my most humble importunities, your ears had been delectate with far nobler melody.”

“But not our eyes with fairer faces, eh? Well, you have chosen your nymphs, and had good store from whence to pick, I doubt not. Few young Dulcineas round but must have been glad to take service under so renowned a captain?”

“The only difficulty, gracious countess, has been to know where to fix the wandering choice of my bewildered eyes, where all alike are fair, and all alike facund.”

“We understand,” said she, smiling;—

 
     “Dan Cupid, choosing ‘midst his mother’s graces,
     Himself more fair, made scorn of fairest faces.”
 

The young scholar capped her distich forthwith, and bowing to her with a meaning look,

“‘Then, Goddess, turn,’ he cried, ‘and veil thy light; Blinded by thine, what eyes can choose aright?’”

“Go, saucy sir,” said my lady, in high glee: “the pageant stays your supreme pleasure.”

And away went Mr. Frank as master of the revels, to bring up the ‘prentices’ pageant; while, for his sake, the nymph of Torridge was forgotten for awhile by all young dames, and most young gentlemen: and his mother heaved a deep sigh, which Lady Bath overhearing—

“What? in the dumps, good madam, while all are rejoicing in your joy? Are you afraid that we court-dames shall turn your Adonis’s brain for him?”

“I do, indeed, fear lest your condescension should make him forget that he is only a poor squire’s orphan.”

“I will warrant him never to forget aught that he should recollect,” said my Lady Bath.

And she spoke truly. But soon Frank’s silver voice was heard calling out—

“Room there, good people, for the gallant ‘prentice lads!”

And on they came, headed by a giant of buckram and pasteboard armor, forth of whose stomach looked, like a clock-face in a steeple, a human visage, to be greeted, as was the fashion then, by a volley of quips and puns from high and low.

Young Mr. William Cary, of Clovelly, who was the wit of those parts, opened the fire by asking him whether he were Goliath, Gogmagog, or Grantorto in the romance; for giants’ names always began with a G. To which the giant’s stomach answered pretty surlily—

“Mine don’t; I begin with an O.”

“Then thou criest out before thou art hurt, O cowardly giant!”

“Let me out, lads,” quoth the irascible visage, struggling in his buckram prison, “and I soon show him whether I be a coward.”

“Nay, if thou gettest out of thyself, thou wouldst be beside thyself, and so wert but a mad giant.”

“And that were pity,” said Lady Bath; “for by the romances, giants have never overmuch wit to spare.”

“Mercy, dear lady!” said Frank, “and let the giant begin with an O.”

“A –”

“A false start, giant! you were to begin with an O.”

“I’ll make you end with an O, Mr. William Cary!” roared the testy tower of buckram.

“And so I do, for I end with ‘Fico!’”

“Be mollified, sweet giant,” said Frank, “and spare the rash youth of yon foolish knight. Shall elephants catch flies, or Hurlo-Thrumbo stain his club with brains of Dagonet the jester? Be mollified; leave thy caverned grumblings, like Etna when its windy wrath is past, and discourse eloquence from thy central omphalos, like Pythoness ventriloquizing.”

“If you do begin laughing at me too, Mr. Leigh –” said the giant’s clock-face, in a piteous tone.

“I laugh not. Art thou not Ordulf the earl, and I thy humblest squire? Speak up, my lord; your cousin, my Lady Bath, commands you.”

And at last the giant began:—

 
     “A giant I, Earl Ordulf men me call,—
     ‘Gainst Paynim foes Devonia’s champion tall;
     In single fight six thousand Turks I slew;
     Pull’d off a lion’s head, and ate it too:
     With one shrewd blow, to let St. Edward in,
     I smote the gates of Exeter in twain;
     Till aged grown, by angels warn’d in dream,
     I built an abbey fair by Tavy stream.
     But treacherous time hath tripped my glories up,
     The stanch old hound must yield to stancher pup;
     Here’s one so tall as I, and twice so bold,
     Where I took only cuffs, takes good red gold.
     From pole to pole resound his wondrous works,
     Who slew more Spaniards than I e’er slew Turks;
     I strode across the Tavy stream: but he
     Strode round the world and back; and here ‘a be!”
 

“Oh, bathos!” said Lady Bath, while the ‘prentices shouted applause. “Is this hedge-bantling to be fathered on you, Mr. Frank?”

“It is necessary, by all laws of the drama, madam,” said Frank, with a sly smile, “that the speech and the speaker shall fit each other. Pass on, Earl Ordulf; a more learned worthy waits.”

Whereon, up came a fresh member of the procession; namely, no less a person than Vindex Brimblecombe, the ancient schoolmaster, with five-and-forty boys at his heels, who halting, pulled out his spectacles, and thus signified his forgiveness of his whilom broken head:—

“That the world should have been circumnavigated, ladies and gentles, were matter enough of jubilation to the student of Herodotus and Plato, Plinius and – ahem! much more when the circumnavigators are Britons; more, again, when Damnonians.”

“Don’t swear, master,” said young Will Cary.

“Gulielme Cary, Gulielme Cary, hast thou forgotten thy—”

“Whippings? Never, old lad! Go on; but let not the license of the scholar overtop the modesty of the Christian.”

“More again, as I said, when, incolae, inhabitants of Devon; but, most of all, men of Bideford school. Oh renowned school! Oh schoolboys ennobled by fellowship with him! Oh most happy pedagogue, to whom it has befallen to have chastised a circumnavigator, and, like another Chiron, trained another Hercules: yet more than Hercules, for he placed his pillars on the ocean shore, and then returned; but my scholar’s voyage—”

“Hark how the old fox is praising himself all along on the sly,” said Cary.

“Mr. William, Mr. William, peace;—silentium, my graceless pupil. Urge the foaming steed, and strike terror into the rapid stag, but meddle not with matters too high for thee.”

“He has given you the dor now, sir,” said Lady Bath; “let the old man say his say.”

“I bring, therefore, as my small contribution to this day’s feast; first a Latin epigram, as thus—”

“Latin? Let us hear it forthwith,” cried my lady.

And the old pedant mouthed out—

 
     “Torriguiam Tamaris ne spernat; Leighius addet
     Mox terras terris, inclyte Drake, tuis.”
 

“Neat, i’ faith, la!” Whereon all the rest, as in duty bound, approved also.

“This for the erudite: for vulgar ears the vernacular is more consonant, sympathetic, instructive; as thus:—

 
     “Famed Argo ship, that noble chip, by doughty Jason’s steering,
     Brought back to Greece the golden fleece, from Colchis home careering;
     But now her fame is put to shame, while new Devonian Argo,
     Round earth doth run in wake of sun, and brings wealthier cargo.”
 

“Runs with a right fa-lal-la,” observed Cary; “and would go nobly to a fiddle and a big drum.”

 
     “Ye Spaniards, quake! our doughty Drake a royal swan is tested,
     On wing and oar, from shore to shore, the raging main whbreasted:—
     But never needs to chant his deeds, like swan that lies a-dying,
     So far his name, by trump of fame, around the sphere is flying.”
 

“Hillo ho! schoolmaster!” shouted a voice from behind; “move on, and make way for Father Neptune!” Whereon a whole storm of raillery fell upon the hapless pedagogue.

“We waited for the parson’s alligator, but we wain’t for yourn.”

“Allegory! my children, allegory!” shrieked the man of letters.

“What do ye call he an alligator for? He is but a poor little starved evat!”

“Out of the road, old Custis! March on, Don Palmado!”

These allusions to the usual instrument of torture in West-country schools made the old gentleman wince; especially when they were followed home by—

“Who stole Admiral Grenville’s brooms, because birch rods were dear?”

But proudly he shook his bald head, as a bull shakes off the flies, and returned to the charge once more.

“Great Alexander, famed commander, wept and made a pother, At conquering only half the world, but Drake had conquer’d t’other; And Hercules to brink of seas!—”

“Oh—!”

And clapping both hands to the back of his neck, the schoolmaster began dancing frantically about, while his boys broke out tittering, “O! the ochidore! look to the blue ochidore! Who’ve put ochidore to maister’s poll!”

It was too true: neatly inserted, as he stooped forward, between his neck and his collar, was a large live shore-crab, holding on tight with both hands.

“Gentles! good Christians! save me! I am mare-rode! Incubo, vel ab incubo, opprimor! Satanas has me by the poll! Help! he tears my jugular; he wrings my neck, as he does to Dr. Faustus in the play. Confiteor!—I confess! Satan, I defy thee! Good people, I confess! [Greek text]! The truth will out. Mr. Francis Leigh wrote the epigram!” And diving through the crowd, the pedagogue vanished howling, while Father Neptune, crowned with sea-weeds, a trident in one hand, and a live dog-fish in the other, swaggered up the street surrounded by a tall bodyguard of mariners, and followed by a great banner, on which was depicted a globe, with Drake’s ship sailing thereon upside down, and overwritten—

 
     “See every man the Pelican,
        Which round the world did go,
     While her stern-post was uppermost,
        And topmasts down below.
     And by the way she lost a day,
        Out of her log was stole:
     But Neptune kind, with favoring wind,
        Hath brought her safe and whole.”
 

“Now, lads!” cried Neptune; “hand me my parable that’s writ for me, and here goeth!”

And at the top of his bull-voice, he began roaring—

 
     “I am King Neptune bold,
       The ruler of the seas
     I don’t understand much singing upon land,
       But I hope what I say will please.
 
 
     “Here be five Bideford men,
       Which have sail’d the world around,
     And I watch’d them well, as they all can tell,
       And brought them home safe and sound.
 
 
     “For it is the men of Devon.
       To see them I take delight,
     Both to tack and to hull, and to heave and to pull,
       And to prove themselves in fight.
 
 
     “Where be those Spaniards proud,
       That make their valiant boasts;
     And think for to keep the poor Indians for their sheep,
       And to farm my golden coasts?
 
 
     “‘Twas the devil and the Pope gave them
       My kingdom for their own:
     But my nephew Francis Drake, he caused them to quake,
       And he pick’d them to the bone.
 
 
     “For the sea my realm it is,
       As good Queen Bess’s is the land;
     So freely come again, all merry Devon men,
       And there’s old Neptune’s hand.”
 

“Holla, boys! holla! Blow up, Triton, and bring forward the freedom of the seas.”

Triton, roaring through a conch, brought forward a cockle-shell full of salt-water, and delivered it solemnly to Amyas, who, of course, put a noble into it, and returned it after Grenville had done the same.

“Holla, Dick Admiral!” cried neptune, who was pretty far gone in liquor; “we knew thou hadst a right English heart in thee, for all thou standest there as taut as a Don who has swallowed his rapier.”

“Grammercy, stop thy bellowing, fellow, and on; for thou smellest vilely of fish.”

“Everything smells sweet in its right place. I’m going home.”

“I thought thou wert there all along, being already half-seas over,” said Cary.

“Ay, right Upsee-Dutch; and that’s more than thou ever wilt be, thou ‘long-shore stay-at-home. Why wast making sheep’s eyes at Mistress Salterne here, while my pretty little chuck of Burrough there was playing at shove-groat with Spanish doubloons?”

“Go to the devil, sirrah!” said Cary. Neptune had touched on a sore subject; and more cheeks than Amyas Leigh’s reddened at the hint.

“Amen, if Heaven so please!” and on rolled the monarch of the seas; and so the pageant ended.

The moment Amyas had an opportunity, he asked his brother Frank, somewhat peevishly, where Rose Salterne was.

“What! the mayor’s daughter? With her uncle by Kilkhampton, I believe.”

Now cunning Master Frank, whose daily wish was to “seek peace and ensue it,” told Amyas this, because he must needs speak the truth: but he was purposed at the same time to speak as little truth as he could, for fear of accidents; and, therefore, omitted to tell his brother how that he, two days before, had entreated Rose Salterne herself to appear as the nymph of Torridge; which honor she, who had no objection either to exhibit her pretty face, to recite pretty poetry, or to be trained thereto by the cynosure of North Devon, would have assented willingly, but that her father stopped the pretty project by a peremptory countermove, and packed her off, in spite of her tears, to the said uncle on the Atlantic cliffs; after which he went up to Burrough, and laughed over the whole matter with Mrs. Leigh.

“I am but a burgher, Mrs. Leigh, and you a lady of blood; but I am too proud to let any man say that Simon Salterne threw his daughter at your son’s head;—no; not if you were an empress!”

“And to speak truth, Mr. Salterne, there are young gallants enough in the country quarrelling about her pretty face every day, without making her a tourney-queen to tilt about.”

Which was very true; for during the three years of Amyas’s absence, Rose Salterne had grown into so beautiful a girl of eighteen, that half North Devon was mad about the “Rose of Torridge,” as she was called; and there was not a young gallant for ten miles round (not to speak of her father’s clerks and ‘prentices, who moped about after her like so many Malvolios, and treasured up the very parings of her nails) who would not have gone to Jerusalem to win her. So that all along the vales of Torridge and of Taw, and even away to Clovelly (for young Mr. Cary was one of the sick), not a gay bachelor but was frowning on his fellows, and vying with them in the fashion of his clothes, the set of his ruffs, the harness of his horse, the carriage of his hawks, the pattern of his sword-hilt; and those were golden days for all tailors and armorers, from Exmoor to Okehampton town. But of all those foolish young lads not one would speak to the other, either out hunting, or at the archery butts, or in the tilt-yard; and my Lady Bath (who confessed that there was no use in bringing out her daughters where Rose Salterne was in the way) prophesied in her classical fashion that Rose’s wedding bid fair to be a very bridal of Atalanta, and feast of the Lapithae; and poor Mr. Will Cary (who always blurted out the truth), when old Salterne once asked him angrily in Bideford Market, “What a plague business had he making sheep’s eyes at his daughter?” broke out before all bystanders, “And what a plague business had you, old boy, to throw such an apple of discord into our merry meetings hereabouts? If you choose to have such a daughter, you must take the consequences, and be hanged to you.” To which Mr. Salterne answered with some truth, “That she was none of his choosing, nor of Mr. Cary’s neither.” And so the dor being given, the belligerents parted laughing, but the war remained in statu quo; and not a week passed but, by mysterious hands, some nosegay, or languishing sonnet, was conveyed into The Rose’s chamber, all which she stowed away, with the simplicity of a country girl, finding it mighty pleasant; and took all compliments quietly enough, probably because, on the authority of her mirror, she considered them no more than her due.

And now, to add to the general confusion, home was come young Amyas Leigh, more desperately in love with her than ever. For, as is the way with sailors (who after all are the truest lovers, as they are the finest fellows, God bless them, upon earth), his lonely ship-watches had been spent in imprinting on his imagination, month after month, year after year, every feature and gesture and tone of the fair lass whom he had left behind him; and that all the more intensely, because, beside his mother, he had no one else to think of, and was as pure as the day he was born, having been trained as many a brave young man was then, to look upon profligacy not as a proof of manhood, but as what the old Germans, and those Gortyneans who crowned the offender with wool, knew it to be, a cowardly and effeminate sin.