ns.

'I am not ashamed of my name,' I said. 'It has been an honest one so
far, and if you wish to know it, it is Thomas Wingfield.'

'I thought it,' he cried, and as he spoke his face grew like the face
of a fiend. Then before I could find time even to wonder, he had sprung
from his horse and stood within three paces of me.

'A lucky day! Now we will see what truth there is in prophecies,' he
said, drawing his silver-mounted sword. 'A name for a name; Juan de
Garcia gives you greeting, Thomas Wingfield.'

Now, strange as it may seem, it was at this moment only that there
flashed across my mind the thought of all that I had heard about the
Spanish stranger, the report of whose coming to Yarmouth had stirred my
father and mother so deeply. At any other time I should have remembered
it soon enough, but on this day I was so set upon my tryst with Lily
and what I should say to her, that nothing else could hold a place in my
thoughts.

'This must be the man,' I said to myself, and then I said no more,
for he was on me, sword up. I saw the keen point flash towards me, and
sprang to one side having a desire to fly, as, being unarmed except for
my stick, I might have done without shame. But spring as I would I could
not avoid the thrust altogether. It was aimed at my heart and it pierced
the sleeve of my left arm, passing through the flesh--no more. Yet at
the pain of that cut all thought of flight left me, and instead of it
a cold anger filled me, causing me to wish to kill this man who had
attacked me thus and unprovoked. In my hand was my stout oaken staff
which I had cut myself on the banks of Hollow Hill, and if I would
fight I must make such play with this as I might. It seems a poor weapon
indeed to match against a Toledo blade in the hands of one who could
handle it well, and yet there are virtues in a cudgel, for when a man
sees himself threatened with it, he is likely to forget that he holds
in his hand a more deadly weapon, and to take to the guarding of his own
head in place of running his adversary through the body.

And that was what chanced in this case, though how it came about exactly
I cannot tell. The Spaniard was a fine swordsman, and had I been armed
as he was would doubtless have overmatched me, who at that age had no
practice in the art, which was almost unknown in England. But when he
saw the big stick flourished over him he forgot his own advantage, and
raised his arm to ward away the blow. Down it