“Not a blessed drop of yours, sir,” said Jack. “I like good wine as well as any man on earth, and see as little of it; but not a drop of yours, sirs, after your frumps and flouts about hanging-on and trencher-scraping. When I first began to love her, I bid good-bye to all dirty tricks; for I had some one then for whom to keep myself clean.” And so Jack was sent home, with a pint of good red Alicant wine in him (more, poor fellow, than he had tasted at once in his life before); while the rest, in high glee with themselves and the rest of the world, relighted the candles, had a right merry evening, and parted like good friends and sensible gentlemen of devon, thinking (all except Frank) Jack Brimblecombe and his vow the merriest jest they had heard for many a day. After which they all departed: Amyas and Cary to Winter's squadron; Frank (as soon as he could travel) to the Court again; and with him young Basset, whose father Sir Arthur, being in London, procured for him a page's place in Leicester's household. Fortescue and Chicester went to their brothers in Dublin; St. Leger to his uncle the Marshal of Munster; Coffin joined Champernoun and Norris in the Netherlands; and so the Brotherhood of the Rose was scattered far and wide, and Mistress Salterne was left alone with her looking-glass. CHAPTER IX HOW AMYAS KEPT HIS CHRISTMAS DAY “Take aim, you noble musqueteers, And shoot you round about; Stand to it, valiant pikemen, And we shall keep them out. There's not a man of all of us A foot will backward flee; I'll be the foremost man in fight, Says brave Lord Willoughby!” Elizabethan Ballad. It was the blessed Christmas afternoon. The light was fading down; the even-song was done; and the good folks of Bideford were trooping home in merry groups, the father with his children, the lover with his sweetheart, to cakes and ale, and flapdragons and mummer's plays, and all the happy sports of Christmas night. One lady only, wrapped close in her black muffler and followed by her maid, walked swiftly, yet sadly, toward the long causeway and bridge which led to Northam town. Sir Richard Grenville and his wife caught her up and stopped her courteously. “You will come home with us, Mrs. Leigh,” said Lady Grenville, “and spend a pleasant Christmas night?” Mrs. Leigh smiled sweetly, and laying one hand on Lady Grenville's arm, pointed with the other to the westward, and said: “I cannot well spend a merry Christmas night while that sound is in my ears.”