d sufficient tact to
discern that his success would be very much facilitated by separating
her from this companion, above all others. He therefore formed a party
of men into a wedge, only taking especial care not to be the point of
it himself, and drove it between them with so much precision, that they
were in a moment far asunder.

"Lady Matilda," said John, "yield yourself my prisoner."

"If you would wear me, prince," said Matilda, "you must win me:" and
without giving him time to deliberate on the courtesy of fighting with
the lady of his love, she raised her sword in the air, and lowered it on
his head with an impetus that would have gone nigh to fathom even that
extraordinary depth of brain which always by divine grace furnishes the
interior of a head-royal, if he had not very dexterously parried the
blow. Prince John wished to disarm and take captive, not in any way to
wound or injure, least of all to kill, his fair opponent. Matilda was
only intent to get rid of her antagonist at any rate: the edge of her
weapon painted his complexion with streaks of very unloverlike crimson,
and she would probably have marred John's hand for ever signing Magna
Charta, but that he was backed by the advantage of numbers, and that her
sword broke short on the boss of his buckler. John was following up his
advantage to make a captive of the lady, when he was suddenly felled to
the earth by an unseen antagonist. Some of his men picked him carefully
up, and conveyed him to his tent, stunned and stupified.

When he recovered, he found Harpiton diligently assisting in his
recovery, more in the fear of losing his place than in that of losing
his master: the prince's first inquiry was for the prisoner he had
been on the point of taking at the moment when his habeas corpus was
so unseasonably suspended. He was told that his people had been on the
point of securing the said prisoner, when the devil suddenly appeared
among them in the likeness of a tall friar, having his grey frock
cinctured with a sword-belt, and his crown, which whether it were shaven
or no they could not see, surmounted with a helmet, and flourishing an
eight-foot staff, with which he laid about him to the right and to the
left, knocking down the prince and his men as if they had been so
many nine-pins: in fine, he had rescued the prisoner, and made a clear
passage through friend and foe, and in conjunction with a chosen
party of archers, had covered the retreat of the