“If it were not for your age and grey hairs, you insolent old vagabond, I would rap your pate smartly with my cudgel.”
“That were easier spoken than done,” rejoined the old man, holding his quarter staff lightly in a defensive posture.
A little dog, which accompanied the old man, perceiving by these actions, and by the loudness of their speech, that the stranger was quarrelling with his master, flew at Cuthbert with a sharp and angry bark, than which perhaps nothing does more inflame the rising choler; he, therefore, struck at the little animal furiously, and the end of his cudgel inflicted on it a sharp stroke, which sent it howling and yelping behind its master.
The old soldier, without a moment’s loss of time, resented this injury by so heavy and well placed a blow on the head of Cuthbert, that his steeple-crowned hat was knocked off; and had it not been defended within by the strong bars of iron with which it had been recently fitted for the wars, he would have gotten a severe bruise.
“He that touches my dog touches me,” said the old man: “I am sorry that I did not make thee feel it.” The quarter staff of the beggar had, by his stumbling and over-reaching himself, flown out of his hand, and his old rabbit-skin cap had fallen upon the ground:—a fine polished head thinly strewn with grey hairs lay bare and exposed.—“There, you may crack it if you will now,” he added, raising the ineffectual defence of his arm.
“I am a man,” said Cuthbert, “and not a brute: I would not strike thee for all my hot words; but I have been beside myself with passion. May God forgive me for my great offence against him—and do you forgive me for the hard things I said to you, and the stroke I gave your dog.”
So speaking, he picked up the old man’s quarter staff and his cap, and gave them into his hands; at the same time taking a piece of silver out of his pocket, he tendered it with a look of good will—but the soldier would not take it.
“It would do me no good,” said he: “I should have no luck with it, and could never relish the bread or beer it bought me.”
“Then lay it out in dog’s meat, friend: thy poor cur will have forgotten my rude blow before thou hast forgiven my uncomfortable words:—you wo’n’t go to sleep in ill will with me, I hope.”
“No, I shan’t do that,” rejoined the aged beggar,—“the good old parson of Cheddar taught me better than that,—and I minds what he said as if it were yesterday—God bless him!—church and king for ever, say I.—I wo’n’t have your money.”