“Don’t call me knave, Sir Gilbert Falstaff, knight,” hiccupped the drunken steward; “or I’ll have the house over your head. You know I can do it. I ha’nt got coat armour, nor breeches armour; but I can pay my way, and keep my sons from the gallows,—more than you can do at this time of day either one or the other.”
Lady Alice turned deadly pale. Sir Gilbert’s lank bones fairly rattled, as he fell back, half dead, in his chair. The guests looked at one another.
Lady Alice, with forced calmness, rose from her seat, and, approaching the drunkard, addressed him—
“Speak thy meaning, fellow—for thou hadst a meaning when thou earnest into this room. What has given thee the right to insult thy master and myself, before our noble guests?”
“Insult you, my lady?” howled the steward, suddenly diverging into the maudlin state. “I couldn’t do it. You’re a sweet angel, you are, born and bred; and I love the very ground you tread on; always did. And when I see you thrown away on that snivelling gull——”
Whether the miserable sot meant gallantry or gratitude is uncertain. At any rate, utterly forgetting the questions asked him, as well as the presence he sat in, he made a staggering movement to take the Lady Alice’s hand. Failing in the first attempt—the lady, rigid with astonishment, still remaining at his side—he rose, smilingly, to repeat it.
Sir Thomas Mowbray gave two strides from his seat, and felled the drunkard to the ground with a well-directed blow on the temples.
Master Lambert rolled, apparently lifeless, into the fire-place among the wood-ashes.
“You have killed him!” said Lady Alice, not without a grateful glance at her champion.
“I am afraid not,” said Mowbray, cruelly enough, it must be admitted; “though, after all, we shall want him alive, to answer a question or two. How now! Sir Hogshead. Must we stave in that wooden head of thine to get anything out of thee?”