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.

CHAPTER VII

THE TRUE AND TRAGICAL HISTORY OF MR. JOHN OXENHAM OF PLYMOUTH

"The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew;
The furr