"Quarter," whimpered the robber captain, pale with fear.
"Then call off your hounds!" replied Hal, hotly, checking his horse.
"I will," answered the trembling Rumney, quickly. "Lads, a truce! Put up your swords, curse you!"
His men were not sorry to get this order, nor their opponents to hear it given. The fight had gone too evenly to please either side, and wounds—some of them perhaps destined to prove fatal—had been nearly equally distributed. Hal's adherents ceased fighting when their foes did, Kit Bottle being the last, and probably the only reluctant one, to desist.
"And now you will turn back, Master Rumney," said Marryott, in a hard, menacing tone, "and find another road to travel! Take with you the knaves that stood by you. The others, an they choose, shall remain my men, in my pay. Come, you rogues, march!"
Master Marryott backed to the side of the road, that Rumney's followers might pass. They did so, readily enough, those who were unhorsed being lifted to saddles by their comrades. Until the two parties were distinctly separated, and several paces were between them, every weapon and every eye on either side remained on the alert to meet treachery. All the deserters from Rumney stayed with Hal.
"'God bless you, Ancient Rumney,'" called out Kit Bottle, slightly altering a remembered speech from a favorite play, as the robber turned his horse's head toward Skipton. "'You scurvy, lousy knave. God bless you!'"
Rumney and his men rode for some distance without answer; Hal and his company, motionless, looking after them. Suddenly, when he was beyond easy overtaking, the robber leader turned in his saddle, and shouted back, vindictively:
"I scorn you, Kit Bottle! You are no better than an Irish footboy! And your master there is a woman-stealing dog, that I'll be quits with yet. He's no gentleman, neither, but a scurvy fencing-master in false feathers!"
"Shall I give chase and make him eat his words?" asked Kit of Master Marryott.