already, as you foretold. Would Heaven that I could hear of
some adventure Westward-ho! and find these big bones swing-
ing in a hammock once more. Pray what has made you so
suddenly in love with bog and rock, that you come back to
tramp them with us? I thought you had spied out the naked-
ness of the land long ago."

"Bog and rock? Nakedness of the land? What is needed
here but prudence and skill, justice and law? This soil, see, is
fat enough, if men were here to till it. These rocks--who
knows what minerals they may hold? I hear of gold and
jewels found already in divers parts; and Daniel, my brother
Humphrey's German assayer, assures me that these rocks are
of the very same kind as those which yield the silver in Peru.
Tut, man! if her gracious Majesty would but bestow on me
some few square miles of this same wilderness, in seven years'
time I would make it blossom like the rose, by God's good help."

"Humph! I should be more inclined to stay here, then."

"So you shall, and be my agent, if you will, to get in my
mine-rents and my corn-rents, and my fishery-rents, eh? Could
you keep accounts, old knight of the bear's-paw?"

"Well enough for such short reckonings as yours would be,
on the profit side at least. No, no--I'd sooner carry lime all
my days from Cauldy to Bideford, than pass another twelve-
month in the land of Ire, among the children of wrath. There
is a curse upon the face of the earth, I believe."

"There is no curse upon it, save the old one of man's sin--
'Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to thee.' But if you
root up the thorns and thistles, Amyas, I know no fiend who
can prevent your growing wheat instead; and if you till the
ground like a man, you plough and harrow away nature's curse,
and other fables of the schoolmen beside," added he, in that
daring fashion which afterwards obtained for him (and never
did good Christian less deserve it) the imputation of Atheism.

"It is sword and bullet, I think, that are needed here, before
plough and harrow, to clear away some of the curse. Until a
few more of these Irish lords are gone where the Desmonds are,
there is no peace for Ireland."

"Humph! not so far wrong, I fear. And yet--Irish
lords? These very traitors are better English blood than we
who hunt them down. When Yeo here slew the Desmond the
other day, he no more let out a drop of Irish blood, than if he
had slain the Lord Deputy himself."

"His blood be on his own head," said Yeo. "He looked

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