"He shall!" I cried, half drawing my sword. "What! Art afraid to draw on a lesser than thy hulking self?"
"False and ingrate though you are, I would not hurt you," he said; "and I will not call upon the guard; but I will have him again secure in his chamber, and so shield you, little devil, from all punishment but what I will myself administer when all is done."
And as he advanced upon me and would have seized me, I lifted my cloak that was on the back of the settle and flung it over his head, where, for a brief space, despite his struggles, I held it. And while his eyes were thus blinded for a moment, Philip, swift and silent, slipped past us and through the door of the stair to the Prince's chamber. Royston, however, soon flung me off and tore the cloak from his head. And I saw at length great anger in his face, and with a last essay at strategy did leap to the door that gives upon the gallery, as if indeed I defended Philip's retreat; and there, with drawn sword and taunting words, I defied him. And then he came, and our swords met. And finding, as well I had known I should find, that he was too strong for me, I was, after a pass or two, at the point of calling him by the old name and of telling mine, when he did something that had formed no part of the teaching he had given me with the foils, so that I found myself speedily at his mercy, and felt the sharp, cold prick of steel low down upon my neck. And then I thought my end was indeed come, and I tried to murmur: "Spare me, dear Ned," but could not.
Now all these things—from Ned's return to my foolish fainting at the first blood—that have in the telling taken so long did happen so quickly that perhaps seconds rather than minutes were their proper measure. And my enemy has since told me that what I have called my swooning seemed but the closing for a few moments of my eyes. But, however that may be, I do think it endured sufficiently for his great concern. For when I opened them I knew not at all where I should be until the white solicitude of his face bending close over brought me very soon to the consciousness of the strong and tender arms that held me. So, seeing I was come to myself, he led me towards the hearth, and set me in a chair. And then I began to feel a little smarting and a warmth of trickling blood. Taking my handkerchief, I thrust it beneath waistcoat and shirt, and pressed it upon the spot that did so smart, whence withdrawing it and seeing the blood upon it, I shuddered.
"Nay, nay," said Ned, while the lines of anxiety upon his face belied the little laugh he forced from his lips, "fret not for a little blood. I thrust not hard. Wherefore did you anger me, monkey? Come," he added, laying his hand to the breast of my shirt and fingering the buttons with that awkwardness that a man has ever for garments that are not his, "I will heal it."
"No," I said, pulling away his hands, "you must not."
"But I would see the hurt, lad," he said. "I know not why, but I am sorry I have hurt you. God knows, I have killed men and thought little of it, but this scratch to a child does mightily vex me." And again he would have loosed the buttons. "Come, open your shirt," he said.
"I say I will not. I am not the lad you think me, sir."
But even then he did not understand, but took my two hands in one of his, so great and strong that mine might scarce writhe themselves about within it, while he set himself to do what I would not for all his asking. And so it was that I came to the last line of my defences. "Let be, dear Ned," I murmured, in that tone of pleading I had ever in the old days used when his will did offer to prove the stronger. "Let be, dear; 't is—'t is thy little maid, Phil," I said, and dropped my eyes before him, and let my prisoned hands lie still.
He stared upon me in an astonishment of wonder that discovered the white all round his eyes, and at first he would not believe.