Peg’s his match, imitating him with such a will as sets every gentleman of ’em a-shooting, a-lunging and a-cursing with all the arms and breath he’s got; and sets the robbers for a second to their wits, for they are not used to any sort of encounter, save one that’s terror-stricken and submissive in the opponent.
’Tis a bit of a mêlée quite in the dark; slashing and pounding betwixt the branches: now a man unhorsed, anon up again; shots resounding, powder flashing, until in about ten minutes or less the chief makes a plunge for Sir Percy, crying out,
“So ’twas you said ‘fight,’ was’t! Have a care; no man can defy Tom Kidde and live to tell it!”
“Nay!” shouts Her Ladyship, with spurs all inches into the gray’s sides, making him rear as she puts herself between Percy and the highwayman, “’twas I said ‘fight’!”
Whizz! and a ball intended for Sir Percy strikes the gray dead under her.
Whizz! and her ball strikes Tom Kidde from his mount.
In less time than it takes to tell it, Peg was straight in the highwayman’s saddle; he was picked up by two of his men, bleeding, set before one of ’em, and off: My Lords and Gentlemen find themselves once more alone in the midst of Epstowe Forest, a-crawling about on their hands and knees a-gathering up their spilled guineas and trinkets by flash of tinder-box.
Sir Percy, trying to explain to them who had been the means of their recovering their valuables and of putting the desperadoes to flight, cries out:
“I tell you! we owe’t all to Sir Robin here! ’Slife, Gentlemen, I’d not have ventured to think of resistance had it not been for him. ’Twas he said, close in my ear, ‘fight,’ and by Gad! Sirs, he’s lost more’n any of us; the horse shot under him.”
“The gray’s well lost teaching Tom Kidde he can’t terrify all the men in England,” answers the Beau from his sprawling search after his diamond snuff-box.