"You, at least, are something even more to the purpose, for you are a man!"
And both spoke truth, and so the battle ended; and Frank went to his books, while Amyas, who must needs be doing, if he was not to dream, started off to the dockyard to potter about a new ship of Sir Richard's, and forget his woes, in the capacity of Sir Oracle among the sailors. And so he had played his move for Rose, even as Eustace had, and lost her: but not as Eustace had.
Who ruled as well as ever mortal can, sir,
When she was stogg'd and the country in a mess,
She was wont to send for a Devon man, sir."
The next morning Amyas Leigh was not to be found. Not that he had gone out to drown himself in despair, or even to bemoan himself "down by the Torridge side." He had simply ridden off, Frank found, to Sir Richard Grenvile at Stow: his mother at once divined the truth, that he was gone to try for a post in the Irish army, and sent off Frank after him to bring him home again, and make him at least reconsider himself.
So Frank took horse and rode thereon ten miles or more; and then, as there were no inns on the road in those days, or indeed in these, and he had some ten miles more of hilly road before him, he turned down the hill towards Clovelly Court, to obtain, after the hospitable humane fashion of those days, good entertainment for man and horse from Mr. Cary the squire.
And when he walked self-invited, like the loud-shouting Menelaus, in the long dark wainscoted hall of the Court, the first object he beheld was the mighty form of Amyas, who, seated at the long table, was alternately burying his face in a pasty, and the pasty in his face, his sorrows having, as it seemed, only sharpened his appetite, while young Will Cary, kneeling on the opposite bench, with his elbows on the table, was in that graceful attitude laying down the law fiercely to him in a low voice.
"Hillo, lad," cried Amyas; "come hither and deliver me out of the hands of this fire-eater, who I verily believe will kill me, if I do not let him kill some one else."
"Ah! Mr. Frank," said Will Cary, who, like all other young gentlernen of these parts, held Frank in high honor, and considered him a very oracle and cynosure of fashion and chivalry, "welcome here: I was just longing for you, too; I wanted
