"Would you go back on your bargain?" he asked, bending his brows on me.
"Nay," said I, "I will take no unfair advantage of any man, huff or Bishop. We shall stand both of us where we stood, you and I."
"And where is that?" he asked as quietly as before.
"Upon the heath," I answered. "I had you under my hands, you and t'other, and there were ten guineas atween you, so ye said. Well," said I, "I will have those guineas and cry quits with you."
"Ten guineas, was it?" he says, considering—"ah, so 'twas. I would not cheat you, Captain Ryder," and smiling softly he drew a bag from his pocket. "I perceive you to be a man of honour," says he, equably. "I love to do business so! Sure, if there were more such at Court! Ten guineas, say you, Captain? Keep your tally," and he paid out the pictures on the table afore him.
I took them up with a nod, where I sat, but the girl, Mrs Barbara, watched us from the distance, standing with her arm resting upon a tall chair to support her.
"Then here's your good health, Sir Gilbert," said I, wondering what method he would take; for I was sure enough that he had a design against me.
"Now," says he, "we are quits, as you say; and that leaves us free, you to go your way, and me to ask the offices of the law to recover that which is stolen of me. Nick," cries he in a clear voice, and at the word the young fellow's nose was through the door. "An officer from the justice, Nick," he says. "I have been robbed," and smiled pleasantly in my face.
Now I will confess that this predicament had not occurred to me, for to say the truth, I had a thought that he would fall on me with his weapon, which I minded not, being as good a swordsman as ever any chamber knight in town. And on that astonishment followed also these sequels in my mind—that if so be he carried out the plan he had, I should not only go to the jug, but he would have the wife that was maid. This put me in a frenzy, yet I dared not attack him with Nick outside, and I knew not what other also. So, very quickly making my resolution, I broke out a-laughing, and said I,—