hese three years as well as e'er a one of you, I have. Make me one
of your brotherhood, and see if I do not dare to suffer as much as any
of you! Let me but be your chaplain, and pray for your luck when you're
at the wars. If I do stay at home in a country curacy, 'tis not much
that you need be jealous of me with her, I reckon."

So, presently, after a certain mock ceremonial of initiation, Jack
Brimblecombe was declared, on the word of Frank Leigh, admitted to the
brotherhood, and was sent home with a pint of good red Alicant wine in
him, while the rest had a right merry evening. After which they all
departed--Amyas and Cary to Ireland, Frank to the court again. And so
the Brotherhood of the Rose was scattered, and Mistress Salterne was
left alone with her looking-glass.

_III.--The Good Ship Rose_

When Amyas was in Ireland he made captive a certain Spanish grandee, Don
Guzman, and sent him to Sir Richard Grenville to be held at ransom. And
then, the Irish being for the time subdued, Amyas sailed with Sir
Humphrey Gilbert on that ill-fated voyage to Newfoundland, and returned
in rags, landing at Plymouth, where he learnt news of Bideford.

Mrs. Hawkins, wife of John Hawkins the port admiral, gave him supper,
and then told him that the Spanish prisoner had "gone off, the villain."

"Without paying his ransom?"

"I can't say that, but there's a poor, innocent young maid gone off with
him, one Salterne's daughter."

"Rose Salterne, the mayor's daughter, the Rose of Torridge?"

"That's her. Bless your dear soul, what ails you?"

Amyas had dropped back in his seat as if he had been shot; but he
recovered himself, and next morning started for Bideford.

The story was true. Don Guzman had been made governor of La Guayra, in
the West Indies, and his ransom had been paid. But he had fallen in love
with the Rose, and the girl, driven, some said, by the over-harshness of
her father, who loved his daughter and knew not how to manage her, had
willingly escaped with him.

Amyas called on Salterne, and the old burgher besought him to go in
pursuit of the Spaniard, and promised he would spend any money that was
needed to fit out a ship to avenge his child. And Amyas heard that
honest John Brimblecombe, now a parson, mindful of his oath to the
brotherhood, was longing to seek the Rose, though it might be in the
jaws of death. Will Cary, too, was for a voyage to the Indies to cut the
throat of Don Guzman.

Then Mrs. L