"The odds? Denys? untold, and all in favour of the boat. I pine for Rome: for Rome is my road to Sevenbergen: and then we shall lie in the boat, but ON the Rhine, the famous Rhine: the cool, refreshing Rhine. I feel its breezes coming: the very sight will cure a little hop-o'-my-thumb fever like mine; away! away!" Finding his excitable friend in this mood, Denys settled hastily with the landlord, and they hurried to the river. On inquiry they found to their dismay that the public boat was gone this half-hour, and no other would start that day, being afternoon. By dint however of asking a great many questions, and collecting a crowd, they obtained an offer of a private boat from an old man and his two sons. This was duly ridiculed by a bystander. "The current is too strong for three oars." "Then my comrade and I will help row," said the invalid. "No need," said the old man. "Bless your silly heart, _he_ owns t'other boat." There was a powerful breeze right astern; the boatmen set a broad sail, and, rowing also, went off at a spanking rate. "Are ye better, lad, for the river breeze?" "Much better. But indeed the doctor did me good." "The doctor? Why you would none of his cures." "No, but I mean--you will say I am nought--but knocking the old fool down--somehow--it soothed me." "Amiable dove! how thy little character opens more and more every day, like a rosebud. I read thee all wrong at first." "Nay, Denys, mistake me not, neither. I trust I had borne with his idle threats, though in sooth his voice went through my poor ears: but he was an infidel, or next door to one, and such I have been taught to abhor. Did he not as good as say, we owed our inward parts to men with long Greek names, and not to Him, whose name is but a syllable, but whose hand is over all the earth? Pagan!" "So you knocked him down forthwith--like a good Christian." "Now Denys, you will still be jesting. Take not an ill man's part! Had it been a thunderbolt from Heaven, he had met but his due; yet he took but a sorry bolster from this weak arm." "What weak arm?" inquired Denys with twinkling eyes. "I have lived among arms, and by Samson's hairy paw never saw I one more like a catapult. The bolster wrapped round his nose and the two ends kissed behind his head, and his forehead resounded, and had he been Goliath, or Julius Cæsar, instead of an old quacksalver, down he had gone. St. Denys guard me from such feeble opposites as thou! and above all from their weak arms--thou diabolical young hypocrite." * * * * *