.

"And why not, sir? I am slow to take up such things, but once afoot I
shall follow it while I have life or breath."

"Ma foi! you have not too much of either, for you are as white as
marble," said Harcomb bluntly. "Take my rede, sir, and let it drop, for
you have come very well out from it."

"Nay," said Alleyne, "this quarrel is none of my making; but, now that I
am here, I swear to you that I shall never leave this spot until I have
that which I have come for: so ask my pardon, sir, or choose another
glaive and to it again."

The young squire was deadly white from his exertions, both on the land
and in the water. Soaking and stained, with a smear of blood on his
white shoulder and another on his brow, there was still in his whole
pose and set of face the trace of an inflexible resolution. His
opponent's duller and more material mind quailed before the fire and
intensity of a higher spiritual nature.

"I had not thought that you had taken it so amiss," said he awkwardly.
"It was but such a jest as we play upon each other, and, if you must
have it so, I am sorry for it."

"Then I am sorry too," quoth Alleyne warmly, "and here is my hand upon
it."

"And the none-meat horn has blown three times," quoth Harcomb, as they
all streamed in chattering groups from the ground. "I know not what the
prince's maitre-de-cuisine will say or think. By my troth! master Ford,
your friend here is in need of a cup of wine, for he hath drunk deeply
of Garonne water. I had not thought from his fair face that he had stood
to this matter so shrewdly."

"Faith," said Ford, "this air of Bordeaux hath turned our turtle-dove
into a game-cock. A milder or more courteous youth never came out of
Hampshire."

"His master also, as I understand, is a very mild and courteous
gentleman," remarked Harcomb; "yet I do not think that they are either
of them men with whom it is very safe to trifle."

CHAPTER XXI. HOW AGOSTINO PISANO RISKED HIS HEAD.

Even the squires' table at the Abbey of St. Andrew's at Bordeaux was
on a very sumptuous scale while the prince held his court there. Here
first, after the meagre fare of Beaulieu and the stinted board of the
Lady Loring, Alleyne learned the lengths to which luxury and refinement
might be pushed. Roasted peacocks, with the feathers all carefully
replaced, so that the bird lay upon the dish even as it had strutted in
life, boars' heads with the tusks gilded and the mouth lined with silver
fo