“Ha!” growled Carleton between his gritting teeth, “so the Mountjoy whelp hath already a trick or two of fence. ’Twill make the game the more worth the playing. Hast stomach for cold steel? Look now!” He danced about me, thrusting and slashing wickedly with his heavy sword, and displayed not ill the training he had had in the halls of Cumberland. But since the day I could raise a foil, it had been my dearest plaything; and whenever my father had been at home, he had made my teaching his special care. Since his return from Scotland there had been scarce a day when we had not spent a brace of hours with the foils or with broadswords and bucklers. Some men are born for sword-play, as others, like Old Marvin, for the cross-bow; but Lionel of Carleton was not of these. A minute had not passed, as we circled and danced about one another, with our weapons striking fire in the shadow of the wood, before I knew that Carleton, with all his added years and training, was no more than a match for me, if indeed as much. He panted and cursed as each trick of thrust was met by its proper parry, and slipped most dangerously on the oak leaves underfoot as I stepped aside from his bull-like rushes. Presently my sword nicked him fairly on the arm, drawing a spurt of blood and a stream of oaths. He lunged wildly forward. I parried his thrust and drove my sword straight at his breast bone. [Illustration: _THE FORCE OF MY BLOW DROVE HIM BACKWARD, BUT MY WEAPON PIERCED HIM NOT_] The force of my blow drove him backward, but my weapon pierced him not. Then at once I realized that which made my blood turn cold. He was wearing beneath his doublet a shirt of linked mail; and I, without defense of any sort, was fighting an armored enemy. “Ho!” I cried, “so thou gard’st thy coward heart with mail, lest peradventure one might fight with thee on even terms.” The wicked look he gave me in reply reminded me, even in that moment of peril, of that on the face of the Gray Wolf of Carleton when he answered my mother’s challenge as to his errand at the gates of Mountjoy. But he spent no breath in reply, and fought on with fury, bent on pressing his unknightly vantage to the utmost. Twice I narrowly escaped his blade; then once mine grazed his neck, for that was now my mark; and again blood spurted from the gash. At this he lost all caution and rushed upon me as a bear upon his foe, getting within my guard by some ill chance, and seizing me about the neck and arms. Both our swords were dropped in the struggle; and we wrestled and fought, not like knights and gentlemen, but like drunken lackeys who have fallen out over their games of dice. Now, indeed, did Carleton’s weight and strength befriend him. I strove for my life to topple him beneath me, but all to no purpose. In an instant I was whirled through the air, and came down with a crash on my back, with Carleton’s knee firmly planted on my breast bone. At once he drew his poniard and pressed the point against my throat.