“By your leave, fair maiden,” said the Englishman, “no man here is my captain. This brave lad is an enemy to my Queen; therefore it is my duty to slay him.”
“If so,” said the maiden, “I too must be slain, for I love not your Queen.”
“But you be no traitor like this—”
Here I whipped out my sword, and we were at it again, ere the maiden, with flashing eyes, could step once more between us.
“Humphrey Dexter!” cried she in a voice I hope I may not hear from her lips again, “give me your sword, sir.”
I obeyed meekly. ’Twould have been impossible to do aught else.
“And you, sir,” said she, turning to the Englishman, “give me yours.”
“Marry! ’tis yours already,” said he, handing it up. “Mine was shivered by a blow from the young McDonnell, and I am his prisoner. But, by your leave,” added he, looking hard at me, “did you call this honest lad Humphrey Dexter? Why, may I perish if it is not the same swashbuckling ruffler I once knew in London town! I thought I had seen his gallows face before! Why, Humphrey, my lad, dost thou remember how I cracked thy skull at quarter-staff a year since in Finsbury Fields, and how thy Jack ’prentices groaned to see thee bite the dust? I liked thee none the less for it, though I beat thee. For ’twas a fair fight! Come, since ’tis thou, give us thy hand, and tell me how thou comest here amongst the enemies—”
“Ay, ay, I’ll tell you,” said I, not wanting to hear the end of the sentence.
Sure enough, this was a brawling soldier lad I had once met in the fields—Jack Gedge, by name—with whom I had had a bout at the quarter-staff. But he lied vilely when he said he beat me thereat; for, although he felled me once, I had him down three times, and the last time so that he had to be carried from the place by his legs and arms.