But as he advanced with lifted axe, the knight stopped him once more.
“Aid me first, comrade, to doff this steel harness of mine, for thou hast no body-armour, and it behoves us to fight fairly. My helmet I must needs keep, for I have vowed that my face shall not be seen till I have achieved the quest on which I am bound; but it matters not, as thou hast a steel cap.”
Again the bandit looked wonderingly at this man, who was conceding to him point after point of vantage, in a combat for life and death.
“Wilt thou then trust me so far?” said he, as he aided the knight to doff his heavy panoply. “Fear’st thou not that I may stab thee in the back unawares?”
“Not I,” said the stranger, coolly; “I have trusted thee, and thou wilt not betray my trust. In a brave man is no treachery.”
For the first time, the savage’s sullen face brightened, and assumed a higher and more human expression than it had yet worn.
“Thou art a true man, whoever thou be’st!” said he, in a tone of grim and half-unwilling admiration; “and thou hast spoken such words as no man ever spake to me yet. ’Tis pity of my vow to spare neither knight nor noble, else would I spare thee!”
“Not so!” cried the other, in just the same jovial tone in which he would have challenged a friend to a game of bowls. “Do thy best, and spare not; and even so will I.”
And at it they went like giants.
Strong, active, used to hand-to-hand fights, the outlaw showered his blows like hail; but all in vain. Some of his strokes were avoided with a nimbleness quite amazing in a man of the stranger’s thickset, clumsy build, and others were warded with a strength that made the assailant reflect with inward dismay how terrible in attack must be that surpassing force which, even in defence, made itself so formidably felt.