“Art mad?” asked the stranger, as he coolly picked up the coins, which Dirk had scattered in his fall. “It is the seller’s business to take, and the buyer’s to give.”
And while Dirk roared for help in vain he leapt on mare Swallow and rode off shouting,
“Aha! Dirk Hammerhand! So you thought to knock a hole in my skull, as you have done to many a better man than yourself. He is a lucky man who never meets his match, Dirk. I shall give your love to the Enchanted Prince, my faithful serving-man, whom they call Martin Lightfoot.”
Dirk cursed the day he was born. Instead of the mare and colt, he had got the two wretched garrons which the stranger had left, and a face which made him so tender of his own teeth, that he never again offered to try a buffet with a stranger.
CHAPTER XIV. — HOW HEREWARD RODE INTO BRUGES LIKE A BEGGARMAN.
The spring and summer had passed, and the autumn was almost over, when great news came to the Court of Bruges, where Torfrida was now a bower-maiden.
The Hollanders had been beaten till they submitted; at least for the present. There was peace, at least for the present, through all the isles of Scheldt; and more than all, the lovely Countess Gertrude had resolved to reward her champion by giving him her hand, and the guardianship of her lands and the infant son.
And Hereward?