Page:Westward Ho! (1855).djvu/249

Rh must know it already? And what ought I to say—to do rather, for talking is no use on this side the grave, nor on the other either, I expect!" And then he asked himself whether his old oath meant nothing or something; whether it was a mere tavern frolic, or a sacred duty. And he held, the more that he looked at it, that it meant the latter.

But what could he do? He had nothing on earth but his sword, so he could not travel to find her. After all, she might not be gone far. Perhaps not gone at all. It might be a mistake, an exaggerated scandal. He would hope so. And yet it was evident that there had been some passages between her and Don Guzman. Eustace's mysterious words about the promise at Lundy proved that. The villain! He had felt all along that he was a villain: but just the one to win a woman's heart, too. Frank had been away—all the Brotherhood away. What a fool he had been, to turn the wolf loose into the sheepfold! And yet who would have dreamed of it? …

"At all events," said Amyas, trying to comfort himself, "I need not complain. I have lost nothing. I stood no more chance of her against Frank than I should have stood against the Don. So there is no use for me to cry about the matter." And he tried to hum a tune concerning the general frailty of women, but nevertheless, like Sir Hugh, felt that "he had a great disposition to cry."

He never had expected to win her, and yet it seemed bitter to know that she was lost to him forever. It was not so easy for a heart of his make to toss away the image of a first love; and all the less easy because that image was stained and ruined.

"Curses on the man who had done that deed! I will yet have his heart's blood somehow, if I go round the world again to find him. If there's no law for it on earth, there's law in heaven, or I'm much mistaken."

With which determination he rode into the ugly, dirty, and stupid town of Okehampton, with which fallen man (by some strange perversity) has chosen to defile one of the loveliest sites in the pleasant land of Devon. And heartily did Amyas abuse the old town that day; for he was detained there, as he expected, full three hours, while the Justice Shallow of the place was sent for from his farm (whither he had gone at sunrise, after the early-rising fashion of those days) to take Yeo's deposition concerning last night's affray. Moreover, when Shallow came, he refused to take the depositions, because they ought to have been made before a brother Shallow at Lydford; and in the wrangling which ensued, was very near finding out what Amyas (fearing fresh loss of time and worse evils beside) had commanded to be concealed, namely, the presence of Jesuits in that Moorland Utopia. Then, in broadest Devon—

"And do you call this Christian conduct, sir, to set a quiet man like me upon they Gubbings, as if I was going to risk my precious life—no, nor ever a constable to Okehampton neither? Let Lydfor' men mind Lydfor' roogs, and by Lydfor' law if they will, hang