Peter was now busy at work shearing his customer's plenteous crop of tangled hair.
"And how many years in all did your worship say that you had been abroad?" he ventured presently to inquire.
"More years than I care to number," was the somewhat curt reply.
"Ah!" responded Peter. "Then, sir, you had no hand in the glorious defeat of the great Armada of Spain? Haply your worship was in some far-distant country at that great time?"
The stranger shifted his position in his chair. His fingers moved restlessly.
"Haply I was," he answered. "But had I chanced to be at the very extremities of the earth, methinks I should still have heard rumour of the matter; for wherever there be Spaniards and wherever there be Englishmen, they are alike disposed to boast of their own prowess on that occasion. And from neither the one nor the other is it possible to arrive at the simple truth."
"The simple truth is simply this, your honour," returned Peter Trollope, with a proud smile, "that the Spaniards, despite their greater ships and their greater army of soldiers, were utterly routed and defeated." And the gossiping barber proceeded to tell the whole story to his listening customer as he continued with his clipping.
At length, having fairly come to the beard, he broke off in his wordy narrative and requested to know if his worship would have his beard cut short and to a peak like Sir Francis Drake's, or broad and round like a spade. "Or shall I shave it off," said he, "and leave only your worship's moustachios?" But he had scarcely made the last suggestion when his eye was once more caught by the cut on the man's cheek. "I would advise that the beard be left as it is," he said, "for it doth help to hide the wound upon your face. Although, indeed, there be many men in Plymouth who would be mightily proud to display so honourable a scar, for I doubt not your worship came by it in some desperate battle against our enemies of Spain."
It was at this moment that Timothy returned into the shop. He overheard his father's remark, and noticed that for some reason the stranger winced, as though he were far from being proud of the old wound.
"I do perceive that 'tis the cut from a sword," added the barber-surgeon, looking at the scar more closely. "I trust, for the honour of England, that you slew the rascal who gave it you."