your service, good fellow."

"Of Burrough by Bideford?"

"Why then? What do you know of me?"

"Oh sir, sir! young brains and happy ones have short memories; but old
and sad brains too long ones often! Do you mind one that was with Mr.
Oxenham, sir? A swearing reprobate he was, God forgive him, and hath
forgiven him too, for His dear Son's sake--one, sir, that gave you a
horn, a toy with a chart on it?"

"Soul alive!" cried Amyas, catching him by the hand; "and are you he?
The horn? why, I have it still, and will keep it to my dying day, too.
But where is Mr. Oxenham?"

"Yes, my good fellow, where is Mr. Oxenham?" asked Sir Richard, rising.
"You are somewhat over-hasty in welcoming your old acquaintance, Amyas,
before we have heard from him whether he can give honest account of
himself and of his captain. For there is more than one way by which
sailors may come home without their captains, as poor Mr. Barker of
Bristol found to his cost. God grant that there may have been no such
traitorous dealing here."

"Sir Richard Grenville, if I had been a guilty man to my noble captain,
as I have to God, I had not come here this day to you, from whom
villainy has never found favor, nor ever will; for I know your
conditions well, sir; and trust in the Lord, that if you will be pleased
to hear me, you shall know mine."

"Thou art a well-spoken knave. We shall see."

"My dear sir," said Amyas, in a whisper, "I will warrant this man
guiltless."

"I verily believe him to be; but this is too serious a matter to be left
on guess. If he will be sworn--"

Whereon the man, humbly enough, said, that if it would please Sir
Richard, he would rather not be sworn.

"But it does not please me, rascal! Did I not warn thee, Amyas?"

"Sir," said the man, proudly, "God forbid that my word should not be as
good as my oath: but it is against my conscience to be sworn."

"What have we here? some fantastical Anabaptist, who is wiser than his
teachers."

"My conscience, sir--"

"The devil take it and thee! I never heard a man yet begin to prate of
his conscience, but I knew that he was about to do something more than
ordinarily cruel or false."

"Sir," said the man, coolly enough, "do you sit here to judge me
according to law, and yet contrary to the law swear profane oaths, for
which a fine is provided?"

Amyas expected an explosion: but Sir Richard pulled a shilling out and
put it on the table. "There--my fine is paid, sirrah, to