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.

CHAPTER III

OF TWO GENTLEMEN OF WALES, AND HOW THEY HUNTED WITH THE HOUNDS, AND YET
RAN WITH THE DEER

"I know that Deformed; he has been a vile thief this seven years;
he goes up and down like a gentleman: I remember his name."--Much
Ado About Nothing.

Amyas slept that night a tired and yet a troubled sleep; and his mother
and Frank, as they bent over his pillow, could see that his brain was
busy with many dreams.

And no wonder; for over and above all the excitement of the day, the
recollection of John Oxenham had taken strange possession of his mind;
and all that evening, as he sat in the bay-windowed room where he had
seen him last, Amyas was recalling to himself every look and gesture
of the lost adventurer, and wondering at himself for so doing, till
he retired to sleep, only to renew the fancy in his dreams. At last he
found himself, he knew not how, sailing westward ever, up the wake of
the setting sun, in chase of a tiny sail which was John Oxenham's.
Upon him was a painful sense that, unless he came up with her in time,
something fearful would come to pass; but the ship would not sail. All
around floated the sargasso beds, clogging her bows with their long
snaky coils of weed; and still he tried to sail, and tried to