And the jolly old man bustled them out of the house and into their saddles, under the broad bright winter’s moon.
“You must make your pace, lads, or the moon will be down before you are over the moors.” And so away they went.
Neither of them spoke for many a mile. Amyas, because his mind was fixed firmly on the one object of saving the honor of his house; and Will, because he was hesitating between Ireland and the wars, and Rose Salterne and love-making. At last he spoke suddenly.
“I’ll go, Amyas.”
“Whither?”
“To Ireland with you, old man. I have dragged my anchor at last.”
“What anchor, my lad of parables?”
“See, here am I, a tall and gallant ship.”
“Modest even if not true.”
“Inclination, like an anchor, holds me tight.”
“To the mud.”
“Nay, to a bed of roses—not without their thorns.”
“Hillo! I have seen oysters grow on fruit-trees before now, but never an anchor in a rose-garden.”
“Silence, or my allegory will go to noggin-staves.”
“Against the rocks of my flinty discernment.”
“Pooh—well. Up comes duty like a jolly breeze, blowing dead from the northeast, and as bitter and cross as a northeaster too, and tugs me away toward Ireland. I hold on by the rosebed—any ground in a storm—till every strand is parted, and off I go, westward ho! to get my throat cut in a bog-hole with Amyas Leigh.”
“Earnest, Will?”
“As I am a sinful man.”
“Well done, young hawk of the White Cliff!”
“I had rather have called it Gallantry Bower still, though,” said Will, punning on the double name of the noble precipice which forms the highest point of the deer park.
“Well, as long as you are on land, you know it is Gallantry Bower still: but we always call it White Cliff when you see it from the sea-board, as you and I shall do, I hope, to-morrow evening.”
“What, so soon?”
“Dare we lose a day?”
“I suppose not: heigh-ho!”