The irony elicited laughter from the Foresters; for a more forbidding set of faces than those of the troopers could not well have been seen anywhere.
“But,” continued the knight, “if you decline to withdraw without showing how skilfully you can yourself handle a sword, I’m willing to give you the opportunity. You’ve had it from me before, and refused. But you may be a braver man, and think yourself a better swordsman now; so I offer it again.”
The taunt was torture itself to the man in whose teeth it was flung. All the more from the cheering and jibes of the Foresters, who seemed thoroughly to enjoy seeing Sir John Wintour’s bullies thus brought to book. And still more that in the window above were two feminine faces, one of them that he had been so late admiring, the ladies evidently listening.
Notwithstanding all, Lunsford could not screw up courage for a combat he had once before declined, and now the second time shunned it, saying,—
“Sir Richard Walwyn, I am not here for the settlement of private quarrels. When the time fits for it I shall answer the challenge you say is repeated, but which I deny. My business at present is with Mr Ambrose Powell, as Deputy-Commissioner of Array, to collect the King’s dues from him. Since he’s refused to pay them, and I have no orders, nor wish, to use violence, so far as shedding blood, it but remains for me to take back his answer to my superiors.”
It was such a ludicrous breakdown of his late blustering, and withdrawal of demand, that the Foresters hailed it with a loud huzza, mingled with laughter and satirical speech.
When their cheering had ceased, so that he could be heard, Sir Richard rejoined,—
“Yes; that is the best thing you can do. And the sooner you set about it the better for both yourself and your men, as you may be aware without further warning.”
It was like giving the last kick to a cur, and as a cur Tom Lunsford took it, literally turning tail—that of his horse—upon Hollymead House.
Out through the haw-haw gate rode he, his troop behind, every man-jack of them looking cowed and crestfallen as himself.