“Fegs, Sir Richard, we are half afeard. With your good leave—”

“Hillo, Tony,” cried Amyas, “who was ever afeard yet with Sir Richard’s good leave?”

“What, has the fellow a tail or horns?”

“Massy no: but I be afeard of treason for your honor; for the fellow is pinked all over in heathen patterns, and as brown as a filbert; and a tall roog, a very strong roog, sir, and a foreigner too, and a mighty staff with him. I expect him to be a manner of Jesuit, or wild Irish, sir; and indeed the grooms have no stomach to handle him, nor the dogs neither, or he had been under the pump before now, for they that saw him coming up the hill swear that he had fire coming out of his mouth.”

“Fire out of his mouth?” said Sir Richard. “The men are drunk.”

“Pinked all over? He must be a sailor,” said Amyas; “let me out and see the fellow, and if he needs putting forth—”

“Why, I dare say he is not so big but what he will go into thy pocket. So go, lad, while I finish my writing.”

Amyas went out, and at the back door, leaning on his staff, stood a tall, raw-boned, ragged man, “pinked all over,” as the steward had said.

“Hillo, lad!” quoth Amyas. “Before we come to talk, thou wilt please to lay down that Plymouth cloak of thine.” And he pointed to the cudgel, which among West-country mariners usually bore that name.

“I’ll warrant,” said the old steward, “that where he found his cloak he found purse not far off.”

“But not hose or doublet; so the magical virtue of his staff has not helped him much. But put down thy staff, man, and speak like a Christian, if thou be one.”

“I am a Christian, though I look like a heathen; and no rogue, though a masterless man, alas! But I want nothing, deserving nothing, and only ask to speak with Sir Richard, before I go on my way.”

There was something stately and yet humble about the man’s tone and manner which attracted Amyas, and he asked more gently where he was going and whence he came.

“From Padstow Port, sir, to Clovelly town, to see my old mother, if indeed she be yet alive, which God knoweth.”

Clovally man! why didn’t thee say thee was Clovally man?” asked all the grooms at once, to whom a West-countryman was of course a brother. The old steward asked—

“What’s thy mother’s name, then?”

“Susan Yeo.”

“What, that lived under the archway?” asked a groom.

“Lived?” said the man.

“Iss, sure; her died three days since, so we heard, poor soul.”

The man stood quite silent and unmoved for a minute or two; and then said quietly to himself, in Spanish, “That which is, is best.”

“You speak Spanish?” asked Amyas, more and more interested.