“’Sdeath! What the devil is the matter!” cries he at top of lung. “Speak or I’ll fire!” and down the stair he plunges to Sir Robin’s very sill. This one, having successfully summoned those more doughty than himself to cope with the supposed danger, now recognizing Sir Percy’s voice, shivers and sweats as he cowers and pulls the counterpane over his head, grasping his purse in his sharp little fingers; wisely never undoing of his door. “Speak or I’ll fire,” repeats Sir Percy, whose candle has been blown out by the draught. He takes a few steps down the hallway where he hears the curious scratching noise Her Ladyship is making as she distractedly feels around for the bundle. At last she grasps it and creeps up unwittingly to Sir Percy’s very side; _de facto_ her arm grazes his as she now raises herself to a standing posture, exactly as her lover, no answer being vouchsafed him, pulls his trigger and the ball goes a-whizzing through Sir Robin’s door panel and finds lodgement in the chimney bricks. Peggy, her customary composure being much the worse for hunger and the general excitement, jumps when the shot pops, and thus inadvertently now palpably touches Percy’s elbow. He turns upon her and seizes her wrists in a grip of steel; she, as tightly hugging the bundle under her armpit, utters no sound, but wriggles and twists to such a purpose that she is about to get free when her opponent renews his endeavors with an oath. “Speak!” says he, “or I’ll brain you!” making to hold Peg’s two hands prisoner in one of his, the while he may seize his rapier and put a finish to the matter. She does not speak, but to the scene jump now the heavy cumbrous country-folk, rattled out of their deep slumber by Sir Percy’s ball and no less by the piercing and prolonged shrieks of Sir Robin, each Colin Clout and Dowsabel of ’em, armed with whatever they could catch; yet, luckily for Her Ladyship, no one of them with sense enough to fetch a candle. “A light! a light! you damnable idiots!” cried Sir Percy, while Her Ladyship makes a final twist to free herself, fruitless as before. She feels her ebbing strength at its last pinch and feels, too, the bundle loosening in her hold. Then, as landlord stumbles to his tinder-box, amid an uproar from all the travelers, especially the new made bride and her spouse, Peggy finds herself let go, nay, almost thrust aside as her captor ejaculates testily: “Zounds! girl, why did you not proclaim your sex, and not leave me to find it out by a long wisp of woman’s hair between my fingers? Lights! Lights! I say! and we’ll get the fellow yet! He must be in the house, for no one’s left it.” Sir Percy has been for the moment meshed in his Lady’s long tresses, which, in the skirmish, have broke leash of the bundle and dangle out yard’s length.