CHAPTER III

OF TWO GENTLEMEN OF WALES, AND HOW THEY HUNTED WITH THE HOUNDS, AND YET
RAN WITH THE DEER

"I know that Deformed; he has been a vile thief this seven years;
he goes up and down like a gentleman: I remember his name."--Much
Ado About Nothing.

Amyas slept that night a tired and yet a troubled sleep; and his mother
and Frank, as they bent over his pillow, could see that his brain was
busy with many dreams.

And no wonder; for over and above all the excitement of the day, the
recollection of John Oxenham had taken strange possession of his mind;
and all that evening, as he sat in the bay-windowed room where he had
seen him last, Amyas was recalling to himself every look and gesture
of the lost adventurer, and wondering at himself for so doing, till
he retired to sleep, only to renew the fancy in his dreams. At last he
found himself, he knew not how, sailing westward ever, up the wake of
the setting sun, in chase of a tiny sail which was John Oxenham's.
Upon him was a painful sense that, unless he came up with her in time,
something fearful would come to pass; but the ship would not sail. All
around floated the sargasso beds, clogging her bows with their long
snaky coils of weed; and still he tried to sail, and tried to fancy that
he was sailing, till the sun went down and all was utter dark. And then
the moon arose, and in a moment John Oxenham's ship was close aboard;
her sails were torn and fluttering; the pitch was streaming from her
sides; her bulwarks were rotting to decay. And what was that line of