bethink me that I had forgot to recharge my
pistol since discharging it at that great yellow beast yesternight.'

Decimus Saxon shook his head sadly. 'I doubt we shall never make a
soldier of you,' he remarked. 'You fall from your horse if the brute
does bit change his step, you show a levity which will not jump with the
gravity of the true soldado, you present empty petronels as a menace,
and finally, you crave permission to tie your armour--armour which the
Cid himself might be proud to wear--around the neck of your horse. Yet
you have heart and mettle, I believe, else you would not be here.'

'Gracias, Signor!' cried Reuben, with a bow which nearly unhorsed him;
'the last remark makes up for all the rest, else had I been forced to
cross blades with you, to maintain my soldierly repute.'

'Touching that same incident last night,' said Saxon, 'of the chest
filled, as I surmise, with gold, which I was inclined to take as lawful
plunder, I am now ready to admit that I may have shown an undue haste
and precipitance, considering that the old man treated us fairly.'

'Say no more of it,' I answered, 'if you will but guard against such
impulses for the future.'

'They do not properly come from me,' he replied, 'but from Will
Spotterbridge, who was a man of no character at all.'

'And how comes he to be mixed up in the matter?' I asked curiously.

'Why, marry, in this wise. My father married the daughter of this same
Will Spotterbridge, and so weakened a good old stock by an unhealthy
strain. Will was a rake-hell of Fleet Street in the days of James, a
chosen light of Alsatia, the home of bullies and of brawlers. His blood
hath through his daughter been transmitted to the ten of us, though I
rejoice to say that I, being the tenth, it had by that time lost much
of its virulence, and indeed amounts to little more than a proper pride,
and a laudable desire to prosper.'

'How, then, has it affected the race?' I asked.

'Why,' he answered, 'the Saxons of old were a round-faced, contented
generation, with their ledgers in their hands for six days and their
bibles on the seventh. If my father did but drink a cup of small beer
more than his wont, or did break out upon provocation into any fond
oath, as "Od's niggers!" or "Heart alive!" he would mourn over it as
though it were the seven deadly sins. Was this a man, think ye, in the
ordinary course of nature to beget ten long lanky children, nine of
whom might have been first