your advice on half-a-dozen matters. Sit down, and eat. There is the ale."
"None so early, thank you."
"Ah no!" said Amyas, burying his head in the tankard, and then mimicking Frank, "avoid strong ale o' mornings. It heats the blood, thickens the animal spirits, and obfuscates the cerebrum with frenetical and lymphatic idols, which cloud the quintessential light of the pure reason. Eh? young Plato, young Daniel, come hither to judgment! And yet, though I cannot see through the bottom of the tankard already, I can see plain enough still to see this, that Will shall not fight."
"Shall I not, eh? who says that? Mr. Frank, I appeal to you, now; only hear."
"We are in the judgment-seat," said Frank, settling to the pasty. "Proceed, appellant."
"Well, I was telling Amyas, that Tom Coffin, of Portledge; I will stand him no longer."
"Let him be, then, said Amyas; "he could stand very well by himself, when I saw him last."
"Plague on you, hold your tongue. Has he any right to look as me as he does, whenever I pass him?"
"That depends on how he looks; a cat may look at a king, provided she don't take him for a mouse."
"Oh, I know how he looks, and what he means too, and he shall stop, or I will stop him. And the other day, when I spoke of Rose Salterne."—"Ah!" groaned Frank, "Atè's apple again!"—"(never mind what I said) he burst out laughing in my face; and is not that a fair quarrel? And what is more, I know that he wrote a sonnet, and sent it to her to Stow by a market woman. What right has he to write sonnets when I can't? It's not fair play, Mr. Frank, or I am a Jew, and a Spaniard, and a Papist; It's not!" And Will smote the table till the plates danced again.
"My dear knight of the burning pestle, I have a plan, a device, a disentanglement, according to most approved rules of chivalry. Let us fix a day, and summon by tuck of drum all young gentlemen under the age of thirty, dwelling within fifteen miles of the habitation of that peerless Oriana."
"And all 'prentice-boys too," cried Amyas out of the pasty.
"And all 'prentice-boys, The bold lads shall fight first, with good quarterstaves, in Bideford Market, till all heads are broken; and the head which is not broken, let the back belong to it pay the penalty of the noble member's cowardice. After which grand tournament, to which that of Tottenham shall be but a flea-bite and a batrachomyomachy"
"Confound you, and your long words, sir," said poor Will, "I know you are flouting me."
"Pazienza, Signor Cavaliere; that which is to come is no flounting, but bloody and warlike earnest. For afterwards all the young gentlemen shall adjourn into a convenient field, sand, or bog-
