which I must not mount, lists which I must
no longer enter, splendours which I cannot hope to share, or battles
which I must not take part in. I should not, with a man's passions for
power and for strife, be set to keep place among the women, despised by
them, too, as a miserable, impotent cripple, unable to aim at obtaining
the favour of the sex."

"Supposing all this to be so, I will yet pray of your knighthood to
remark," replied Dwining, still busying himself with arranging the
dressings of the wounds, "that your eyes, which you must have lost
with your head, may, being spared to you, present as rich a prospect of
pleasure as either ambition, or victory in the list or in the field, or
the love of woman itself, could have proposed to you."

"My sense is too dull to catch thy meaning, leech," replied Ramorny.
"What is this precious spectacle reserved to me in such a shipwreck?"

"The dearest that mankind knows," replied Dwining; and then, in the
accent of a lover who utters the name of his beloved mistress, and
expresses his passion for her in the very tone of his voice, he added
the word "REVENGE!"

The patient had raised himself on his couch to listen with some anxiety
for the solution of the physician's enigma. He laid himself down again
as he heard it explained, and after a short pause asked, "In what
Christian college learned you this morality, good Master Dwining?"

"In no Christian college," answered his physician; "for, though it is
privately received in most, it is openly and manfully adopted in none.
But I have studied among the sages of Granada, where the fiery souled
Moor lifts high his deadly dagger as it drops with his enemy's blood,
and avows the doctrine which the pallid Christian practises, though
coward-like he dare not name it."

"Thou art then a more high souled villain than I deemed thee," said
Ramorny.

"Let that pass," answered Dwining. "The waters that are the stillest are
also the deepest; and the foe is most to be dreaded who never threatens
till he strikes. You knights and men at arms go straight to your purpose
with sword in hand. We who are clerks win our access with a noiseless
step and an indirect approach, but attain our object not less surely."

"And I," said the knight, "who have trod to my revenge with a mailed
foot, which made all echo around it, must now use such a slipper as
thine--ha?"

"He who lacks strength," said the wily mediciner, "must attain his
purpose by skil