“Sir,” says I, “you have hit it, and yet not altogether, for ’tis a woman that hath brought me to this pass, and yet not as you imagine it, for I pretended to her hand in an honourable manner, and she used me better than I deserved. ’Twas my situation and hers made my pretensions dishonourable.” “Tush!” says he; “_dishonourable honour_, what is this? Or do you prefer your doings to be named _honourable dishonour_? Riddle me no riddles, Ned. _Many stumble at a straw and leap over a blocke_, and I fear lest your honour have brought you perilous near to dishonour. But tell me your tale, and let me hear of your hairbreadth ’scapes and most disastrous chances, and I’ll help you in so far as my conscience will suffer me. Who is the female you speak of, and how hath she brought you into trouble?” But this seeming to me to reflect somewhat upon Madam Heliodora, whose name and reputation I must ever hold sacred, I made haste to tell Mr Martin with some heat all my history, which he had picked up wrong from my first words, and he listened with prodigious attention, nodding and wagging his head at times, but saying little. “Ah, Ned, Ned!” quoth he at last, “I would we had never sent you to Goa, and yet, as the proverb saith, _Bought wit is best_. Perhaps ’tis these very trials that are to make a man of you in time.” “Nay, sir, when am I to be a man if not now?” asked I. “Now? when you are still slighting your solemn engagement with your cousin, and all for the sake of a presumptuous passion that sprung up in a week?” said he. “When you are treasuring all manner of spite against this French lady and her friends for their share in your undoing, and even against that nobleman to whom she is betrothed, that never injured you, save unwittingly by the fact of his living at all? No, lad, I shan’t account you a man until you show yourself one. When you award blame to yourself instead of to these other persons, and are ready to atone, so far as may be, for your fault, then I shall esteem you a man, and worthy to win a woman’s love.” I was silent from very shame, for Mr Martin had read my thoughts better than I myself, and they looked black enough when he uttered them aloud. He laid his hand upon my shoulder kindly-- “I spake lightly at my first seeing you, Ned, calling you a man grown. This you an’t yet, but I hope to see you one. There is much for you to learn yet, and it may be to suffer, but _He runneth far, that never turneth againe_.”