"We will not allow anyone to lord it over us!"
"The peasant shall dance to our tune!"
"And not we to his."
And five or six of the most excited, who had lately worn the jacket of the peasants themselves, rushed to drag Bertila down the steps. The old man would have got the worst of it, had not the aforesaid jolly sergeant thrown himself between him and the assailants.
"Hold on, boys!" cried Bengt Kristerson in a stentorian voice. "What the devil are you about? Are you honest soldiers? Do you not see that the old man is seventy years old, and yet you go six to one at him! Blitz-donner-kreutz-Pappenheim (the sergeant had learned this potent oath in the proper school, and it never failed in its effect), is that warlike? What would the king say about it? Out of the way, boys; the old man is mine; I alone have the right to wash him clean. You should have seen how he threw me down the steps yesterday like an old glove. It was a fine stroke, and now it has to be repaid."
Courage and magnanimity seldom fail. The nearest willingly gave way. The sergeant advanced to the steps. Bertila could reach him with his whip, but he did not strike. He knew his people.
"Do you know what it means, peasant," cried the sergeant with an authoritative air, which would have become General Stälhandske himself, "to throw a soldier of the great king down the steps? Do you know what it means to knock off the hat of a defender of the evangelical faith, and a conqueror who has gained fourteen battles and run his sword through sixteen or seventeen living generals? Do you know, peasant, if I were in your place——?"
"If I stood in the place of a soldier of his Majesty," coolly answered Bertila, "I would respect an honest man in his own house, and a grandsire's old age. And if I stood in the shoes of Bengt Kristerson, and had conquered the Roman Emperor, and run my sword through seventeen living commanders, still I would not forget that Bengt Kristerson's father, Krister Nilsson, was a Limingo peasant, and fell on Ilmola's ice like an honest fighter against Fleming's tyranny."
The sergeant was abashed for a moment. Then he stepped close up to his opponent, and said in a bragging manner:
"Do you know, peasant, that I could impale you on this?" and so saying, he drew his long sword half-way from its sheath.