"Your worship?"

"Jesuits, Will!"

"May the father of lies fly away with them over the nearest
Cliff!"

"He will not do that while this Irish trouble is about.
Those fellows are come to practise here for Saunders and
Desmond."

"Perhaps they have a consecrated banner in their bag, the
scoundrels! Shall I and young Coffin on and stop them?
Hard if the honest men may not rob the thieves once in a way."

"No; give the devil rope, and he will hang himself. Keep
thy tongue at home, and thine eyes too, Will."

"How then?"

"Let Clovelly beach be watched night and day like any
mousehole. No one can land round Harty Point with these
south-westers. Stop every fellow who has the ghost of an Irish
brogue, come he in or go he out, and send him over to me."

"Some one should guard Bude-haven, sir."

"Leave that to me. Now then, forward, gentlemen all, or
the stag will take the sea at the Abbey."

And on they crashed down the Hartland glens, through the
oak-scrub and the great crown-ferns; and the baying of the
slow-hound and the tantaras of the born died away farther and
fainter toward the blue Atlantic, while the conspirators, with
lightened hearts, pricked fast across Bursdon upon their evil
errand. But Eustace Leigh had other thoughts and other cares
than the safety of his father's two mysterious guests, important
as that was in his eyes; for he was one of the many who had
drunk in sweet poison (though in his case it could hardly be called
sweet) from the magic glances of the Rose of Torridge. He
had seen her in the town, and for the first time in his life fallen
utterly in love; and now that she had come down close to his
father's house, he looked on her as a Jamb fallen unawares into
the jaws of the greedy wolf, which he felt himself to be. For
Eustace's love had little or nothing of chivalry, self-sacrifice, or
purity in it; those were virtues which were not taught at
Rheims. Careful as the Jesuits were over the practical morality
of their pupils, this severe restraint had little effect in producing
real habits of self-control. What little Eustace had learnt of
women from them, was as base and vulgar as the rest of their
teaching. What could it be else, if instilled by men educated
in the schools of Italy and France, in the age which produced
the foul novels of Cinthio and Bandello, and compelled Rabelais

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