“And you, sir, a subject of your King and a servant of his cause?” says the prisoner, tauntingly.
The Captain got up, smiling through his teeth.
“If, sir,” says he, “you propose to preach a sermon on morality, I shall be glad to reach the Bible down.”
“Oh, pray don’t trouble,” said the rebel, suavely. “As your own conduct, sir, happens to be my text, the Bible, of course, can contribute little to the occasion. Besides, sir, my opinion of you as a man can be delivered in about half a dozen words. You are, sir, in my opinion, a pretty, full-blooded blackguard, and I think, sir, that for persons of your kidney hanging is a luxury.”
The Captain bent his head a little under these carefully planted blows. But he remained wonderfully self-possessed and passionless.
“Thank you, puppy,” he replied, making a scarcely noticeable step the nearer to his foe, “but I think that your opinion, however valuable, is not at all required. Therefore, puppy, I shall have to teach you that there are occasions when it were wiser to restrain it.”
And having uttered this in an absurdly calm and listless fashion the Captain shot his fist out quicker than the eye could follow it, and ere one might guess what had occurred, a horrid, heavy fall made the room quake and set the furniture a rattling. Young Anthony was prone upon the carpet with a faint streak of blood beginning to issue from his neck.
In an instant was I bending over him, and crying in my anguish:
“Oh, my dear lad, you are not hurt!”
At first he did not speak, being partly dazed with the concussion of his fall, but before I could repeat the question, behold! he was on his feet and springing at the Captain with the ardour of a lion. His enemy was wary though, and prepared in every particular for this onslaught. Armed with his crutch he received the charge full upon that weapon, with farther disastrous consequences to the youth, who straightway met the carpet for the second time. ’Twas then that I did intervene. I ran between these combatants, and dared them on pain of unutterable penalties to exchange another blow.