you I shall not run away till you come again."

So I went and fetched him a sword. And we fought there a half-hour by
the clock, till our breath failed us, and never a blow could we get home
on one another. I had no stomach for the business; and yet, when I
found him so stubborn a swordsman, my blood got up, and I think I should
have run him through if I could. But he had no mind to let me, and put
me to it hard to keep my own skin whole.

So we halted to fetch breath, and before we could go to it again, the
maiden came out of her lodging and stood betwixt us.

"Put by your swords," said she, "I command you both. What is your
quarrel? and have you no work for your captain, that you thus bring
civil war into his castle?"

"By your leave, fair maiden," said the Englishman, "no man here is my
captain. This brave lad is an enemy to my Queen; therefore it is my
duty to slay him."

"If so," said the maiden, "I too must be slain, for I love not your
Queen."

"But you be no traitor like this--"

Here I whipped out my sword, and we were at it again, ere the maiden,
with flashing eyes, could step once more between us.

"Humphrey Dexter!" cried she in a voice I hope I may not hear from her
lips again, "give me your sword, sir."

I obeyed meekly. 'Twould have been impossible to do aught else.

"And you, sir," said she, turning to the Englishman, "give me yours."

"Marry! 'tis yours already," said he, handing it up. "Mine was shivered
by a blow from the young McDonnell, and I am his prisoner. But, by your
leave," added he, looking hard at me, "did you call this honest lad
Humphrey Dexter? Why, may I perish if it is not the same swashbuckling
ruffler I once knew in London town! I thought I had seen his gallows
face before! Why, Humphrey, my lad, dost thou remember how I cracked
thy skull at quarter-staff a year since in Finsbury Fields, and how thy
Jack 'prentices groaned to see thee bite the dust? I liked thee none
the less for it, though I beat thee. For 'twas a fair fight! Come,
since 'tis thou, give us thy hand, and tell me how thou comest here
amongst the enemies--"

"Ay, ay, I'll tell you," said I, not wanting to hear the end of the
sentence.

Sure enough, this was a brawling soldier lad I had once met in the
fields--Jack Gedge, by name--with whom I had had a bout at the quarter-
staff. But he lied vilely when he said he beat me thereat; for,
although he felled me once, I had him down three times,