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Rh 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 new-fangled hot wines, and aqua vitæs, 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."

"Ah," said Cary, "there, as in Ireland, we are proving her Majesty's saying true, that Devonshire is her right hand, and the young children thereof like the arrows in the hand of a giant."

"They may well be," said his son, "when some of them are giants themselves, like my tall schoolfellow opposite."

"He will be up and doing again presently, I'll warrant him," said old Cary.

"And that I shall," quoth Amyas. "I have been devising brave deeds; and see in the distance enchanters to be bound, dragons choked, empires conquered, though not in Holland."

"You do?" asked Will a little sharply; for he had had a half suspicion that more was meant than met the ear.

"Yes," said Amyas, turning off his jest again, "I go to what Raleigh calls the Land of the Nymphs. Another month, I hope will see me abroad in Ireland."

"Abroad? Call it rather at home," said old Cary; "for it is full of Devon men from end to end, and you will be among friends all day long. George Bourchier from Tawstock has the army now in Munster, and Warham St. Leger is Marshal; George Carew is with Lord Gray of Wilton (poor Peter Carew was killed at Glendalough); and after the defeat last year, when that villain Desmond cut off Herbert and Price, the companies were made up with six hundred Devon men, and Arthur Fortescue at their head; so that the old county holds her head as proudly in the Land of Ire as she does in the Low Countries and the Spanish Main."

"And where," asked Amyas, "is Davils of Marsland, who used to teach me how to catch trout, when I was staying down at Stow? He is an Ireland, too, is he not?"