“What say ye to waitin’ till your shoulder ain’t so stiff?” he inquired, with pointed reference to the injury MacLeod had received at the hands of Wade. His mock condolence pricked Colin to frenzy. He drove so vicious a blow at the bard that when the latter side-stepped the boss staggered against the side of the camp.
“But sure I can make it even,” said Larry, facing him again without discomposure; “for I’ll sing a bit of song for you to dance by.”
The merry insolence of this brought a hoarse hoot of delight from both sides. And pressing upon his foe so actively that the crippled MacLeod was put to his utmost to ward thwacks off his head and shoulders, this sprightly Cyrano of the kingdom of spruce carolled after this fashion:
“Come, all ye good shillaly men.
Come, lis-ten unto me:
Old Watson made a walkin’-cane,
And used a popple-tree.
The knob it were a rouser—
A rouser, so ’twas said—
And when ye sassed old Watson
He would knock ye on the head.”
MacLeod got a tap that made his eyes shut like the snap of a patent cigar-cutter.
“Chorus!” exhorted the lyrist. And they bellowed jovially:
“Knick, knock,
Hickory dock,
And he’d hit ye on the head!”
Larry leaped back, whirled his stick so rapidly that its bright peeled surface seemed to spit sparks, and again got over the boss’s indifferent guard with a whack that echoed hollowly.
MacLeod was too angry to retreat. He was too angry to see clearly, and his brain rang dizzily with the blows he had received. His injured shoulder ached with the violence of his exertions. But his pride kept him up, and forced him to meet the fresh attack that Gorman made—an attack in which that master seemed to be fencing mostly to mark the time of his jeering song: