“No, fegs, no! kecking mun, kecking mun, so hard as ever was futeball! Goodness, Father, who did ever? If a haven’t kecked mun right into river, and got on mun’s horse and rod away!”

And so saying, down she came again.

“And now then, my dear life, us be better to goo hoom and get you sommat warm. You’m mortal cold, I rackon, by now. I was cruel fear’d for ye: but I kept mun off clever, didn’t I, now?”

“I wish—I wish I had not seen Mr. Leigh’s face!”

“Iss, dreadful, weren’t it, poor young soul; a sad night for his poor mother!”

“Lucy, I can’t get his face out of my mind. I’m sure he overlooked me.”

“Oh then! who ever heard the like o’ that? When young gentlemen do overlook young ladies, tain’t thikketheor aways, I knoo. Never you think on it.”

“But I can’t help thinking of it,” said Rose. “Stop. Shall we go home yet? Where’s that servant?”

“Never mind, he wain’t see us, here under the hill. I’d much sooner to know where my old man was. I’ve a sort of a forecasting in my inwards, like, as I always has when aught’s gwain to happen, as though I shuldn’t zee mun again, like, I have, miss. Well—he was a bedient old soul, after all, he was. Goodness, Father! and all this while us have forgot the very thing us come about! Who did you see?”

“Only that face!” said Rose, shuddering.

“Not in the glass, maid? Say then, not in the glass?”

“Would to heaven it had been! Lucy, what if he were the man I was fated to—”

“He? Why, he’s a praste, a Popish praste, that can’t marry if he would, poor wratch.”

“He is none; and I have cause enough to know it!” And, for want of a better confidant, Rose poured into the willing ears of her companion the whole story of yesterday’s meeting.

“He’s a pretty wooer!” said Lucy at last, contemptuously. “Be a brave maid, then, be a brave maid, and never terrify yourself with his unlucky face. It’s because there was none here worthy of ye, that ye seed none in glass. Maybe he’s to be a foreigner, from over seas, and that’s why his sperit was so long a coming. A duke, or a prince to the least, I’ll warrant, he’ll be, that carries off the Rose of Bideford.”

But in spite of all the good dame’s flattery, Rose could not wipe that fierce face away from her eyeballs. She reached home safely, and crept to bed undiscovered: and when the next morning, as was to be expected, found her laid up with something very like a fever, from excitement, terror, and cold, the phantom grew stronger and stronger before her, and it required all her woman’s tact and self-restraint to avoid betraying by her exclamations what had happened on that fantastic night. After a fortnight’s weakness, however, she recovered and went back to Bideford: but ere she arrived there, Amyas was far across the seas on his way to Milford Haven, as shall be told in the ensuing chapters.