rds: but for such as you. Look here, sir; I should
like to feed a crew of such up, as you'd feed a main of fighting-cocks,
and then start them with a pair of Sheffield spurs a-piece--you've a
good one there to your side, sir: but don't you think a man might carry
two now, and fight as they say those Chineses do, a sword to each hand?
You could kill more that way, Captain Leigh, I reckon?"

Amyas half laughed.

"One will do, Mr. Salterne, if one is quick enough with it."

"Humph!--Ah--No use being in a hurry. I haven't been in a hurry. No--I
waited for you; and here you are and welcome, sir! Here comes supper, a
light matter, sir, you see. A capon and a brace of partridges. I had no
time to feast you as you deserve."

And so he ran on all supper-time, hardly allowing Amyas to get a word
in edge-ways; but heaping him with coarse flattery, and urging him to
drink, till after the cloth was drawn, and the two left alone, he grew
so outrageous that Amyas was forced to take him to task good-humoredly.

"Now, my dear sir, you have feasted me royally, and better far than I
deserve, but why will you go about to make me drunk twice over, first
with vainglory and then with wine?"

Salterne looked at him a while fixedly, and then, sticking out his
chin--"Because, Captain Leigh, I am a man who has all his life tried the
crooked road first, and found the straight one the safer after all."

"Eh, sir? That is a strange speech for one who bears the character of
the most upright man in Bideford."

"Humph. So I thought myself once, sir; and well I have proved it. But
I'll be plain with you, sir. You've heard how--how I've fared since you
saw me last?"

Amyas nodded his head.

"I thought so. Shame rides post. Now then, Captain Leigh, listen to me.
I, being a plain man and a burgher, and one that never drew iron in my
life except to mend a pen, ask you, being a gentleman and a captain
and a man of honor, with a weapon to your side, and harness to your
back--what would you do in my place?"

"Humph!" said Amyas, "that would very much depend on whether 'my place'
was my own fault or not."

"And what if it were, sir? What if all that the charitable folks of
Bideford--(Heaven reward them for their tender mercies!)--have been
telling you in the last hour be true, sir,--true! and yet not half the
truth?"

Amyas gave a start.

"Ah, you shrink from me! Of course a man is too righteous to forgive
those who repent, though God is not."