you shall," cried Oxenham, with a great oath; "and take a galloon,
and dine off carbonadoed Dons. Whose son are you, my gallant fellow?"

"Mr. Leigh's, of Burrough Court."

"Bless his soul! I know him as well as I do the Eddystone, and his
kitchen too. Who sups with him to-night?"

"Sir Richard Grenville."

"Dick Grenville? I did not know he was in town. Go home and tell your
father John Oxenham will come and keep him company. There, off with you!
I'll make all straight with the good gentleman, and you shall have your
venture with me; and as for the horn, let him have the horn, Yeo, and
I'll give you a noble for it."

"Not a penny, noble captain. If young master will take a poor mariner's
gift, there it is, for the sake of his love to the calling, and
Heaven send him luck therein." And the good fellow, with the impulsive
generosity of a true sailor, thrust the horn into the boy's hands, and
walked away to escape thanks.

"And now," quoth Oxenham, "my merry men all, make up your minds what
mannered men you be minded to be before you take your bounties. I want
none of your rascally lurching longshore vermin, who get five pounds
out of this captain, and ten out of that, and let him sail without them
after all, while they are stowed away under women's mufflers, and
in tavern cellars. If any man is of that humor, he had better to cut
himself up, and salt himself down in a barrel for pork, before he meets
me again; for by this light, let me catch him, be it seven years hence,
and if I do not cut his throat upon the streets, it's a pity! But if any
man will be true brother to me, true brother to him I'll be, come wreck
or prize, storm or calm, salt water or fresh, victuals or none, share
and fare alike; and here's my hand upon it, for every man and all! and
so--

"Westward ho! with a rumbelow,
And hurra for the Spanish Main, O!"

After which oration Mr. Oxenham swaggered into the tavern, followed by
his new men; and the boy took his way homewards, nursing his precious
horn, trembling between hope and fear, and blushing with maidenly
shame, and a half-sense of wrong-doing at having revealed suddenly to a
stranger the darling wish which he had hidden from his father and mother
ever since he was ten years old.

Now this young gentleman, Amyas Leigh, though come of as good blood as
any in Devon, and having lived all his life in what we should even
now call the very best society, and being (on account of the