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 at 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, "Ate'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 belonging 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 flouting, but
bloody and warlike earnest. For afterwards all the young gentlemen
shall adjourn into a convenient field, sand, or bog--which last will be
better, as no man will be able to run away, if he be up to his knees
in soft peat: and there stripping to our shirts, with rapiers of equal
length and keenest temper, each shall slay his man, catch who catch can,
and the conquerors fight again, like a most valiant main of gamecocks
as we are, till all be dead, and out of their woes; after which the
survivor, bewailing before heaven and earth the cruelty of our Fair
Oriana, and the slaughter which her basiliscine