“We’ve not a groat betwixt us, Your Honor, on our life!”
“I want no groats, nor guineas either!” says Percy, now leaving his man to cover the steeds and the postilions, while he jumps off the roan’s back and springs to the side of the coach.
To wrest the door from the feeble clutch of the shrieking little gentleman from Kent; to open it; seize him, stopping his frantic and craven cries with a thrust of a pocket napkin in his mouth; to haul him out and send him spinning over the turf with his gold and silver scattering from purse and pockets, is, with Sir Percy, the work of a very few seconds.
“Mercy! Mercy! Mr. Highwayman!” whimpers the Baronet, cringing on his knees, as Grigson lifts himself up on the off leader’s back and Percy props the swooning figure within the coach.
“’Slife, Sir, whoever you are! Raise your eyes! I am Sir Percy de Bohun, at your service any time three hours hence.”
Sir Robin glances up, his crooked little legs now bowing more into an arc than before, as he hears the dread name of his rival.
Clapping hand to hilt, however, he stands up.
“Sir,” says he, pushed into a valiance he has no smallest sympathy with, solely from fear that Lady Peggy may have open ears by this time. “Sir, that Lady is my affianced. I command you, quit her and leave us to pursue our journey in peace. D’ye hear, Sir?” Sir Robin brandishes his weapon, now reinforced by the approach of his servants. “I’ll stick you where you stand, Sir!” shouts McTart, prancing a bit nearer and actually touching Percy’s shoulder with the point of his weapon,—be it remembered de Bohun’s back was toward him as he leaned into the coach arranging the cushions.
“Will you!” says Sir Percy, coolly turning and seizing the little man’s blade and administering therewith to its owner a smart box on his out-flapping ears. “Had I time to waste,” adds Percy, now jumping into the coach, “I’d leave your carcass here. Put up your pistol, Sir,” says he, aiming his own straight at Sir Robin’s now un-wigged pate, “or, damn you! you’ll be cold inside a second. On with you, Grigson,” calls master to man. “Life and death are in this matter. If the four beasts, and you, too, drop at the finish, get us to Kennaston faster than the wind travels.”
Even while he speaks, he watches the still white face so near him with his finger on his trigger, Sir Robin discreetly backing away and rending the air with noisy and impotent curses; then a plunge, a long, resounding call from Grigson; the two lackeys agog at finding themselves alive, Sir Robin’s coach starts on as if the very devil himself were in its wake.