“That thou shalt have.—Stand back, my mates,” said the brave Englishman. “If I fall, give him fair play, and let him go off free with his people.”
“Long life to the noble Captain!” cried the soldiers, as impatient to see the duel, as if it had been a bull-baiting.
“He will have a short life of it, though,” said the sergeant, “if he, an old man of sixty, is to fight, for any reason, or for no reason, with every man he meets, and especially the young fellows he might be father to.—And here comes the Warden besides to see the sword-play.”
In fact, Sir John Foster came up with a considerable body of his horsemen, just as his Captain, whose age rendered him unequal to the combat with so strong and active a youth as Glendinning, was deprived of his sword.
“Take it up for shame, old Stawarth Bolton,” said the English Warden; “and thou, young man, tell me who and what thou art?”
“A follower of the Earl of Murray, who bore his will to your honour,” answered Glendinning,—“but here he comes to say it himself; I see the van of his horsemen come over the hills.”
“Get into order, my masters,” said Sir John Foster to his followers; “you that have broken your spears, draw your swords. We are something unprovided for a second field, but if yonder dark cloud on the hill edge bring us foul weather, we must bear as bravely as our broken cloaks will bide it. Meanwhile, Stawarth, we have got the deer we have hunted for—here is Piercie Shafton hard and fast betwixt two troopers.”
“Who, that lad?” said Bolton; “he is no more Piercie Shafton than I am. He hath his gay cloak indeed—but Piercie Shafton is a round dozen of years older than that slip of roguery. I have known him since he was thus high. Did you never see him in the tilt-yard or in the presence?”
“To the devil with such vanities!” said Sir John Foster; “when had I leisure for them or any thing else? During my whole life has she kept me to this hangman's office, chasing thieves one day and traitors another, in daily fear of my life; the lance never hung up in the hall, the foot never out of the stirrup, the saddles never off my nags' backs; and now, because I have been mistaken in the person of a man I never saw, I warrant me, the next letters from the Privy Council will rate me as I were a dog—a man were better dead than thus slaved and harassed.”
A trumpet interrupted Foster's complaints, and a Scottish pursuivant who attended, declared “that the noble Earl of Murray desired, in all honour and safety, a personal conference with Sir John Foster, midway between their parties, with six of company in each, and ten free minutes to come and go.”