"Well, now," said I, looking straight along the pistol into his squinting face, "this is indeed a poor return for favours; still, advantage counts for everything, and needs must when the devil drives. So, if you will kindly lower your weapon, friend, for fear of accidents, I will oblige you." He fell into the trap. Down went the pistol, and, with a greedy look, he drew quite close. Next moment I had kicked him in the wind with all my might, and sent him flying backward to the ground. Then, as he lay there gasping, I threw his poisonous relics over him, and with a gay "Good morrow to you, Master Ammon!" galloped off. "A murderous footpad--nothing more or less," I muttered, as we dropped into a walk. "Well, ’tis a handsome warning not to ride again unarmed on byways, even on a summer’s evening; and at least the rascal got a warning too." That was how I summed the matter up; but, as you will see hereafter, it had been greatly better for us all if Tubal Ammon had been lying dead upon the road behind me. *CHAPTER I* *Concerning "A Certain Person"* It was on the tenth day of June, in the year sixteen hundred and eighty-five (and three days after my first meeting with Tubal Ammon), when, as you know, King James the Second had scarce been three months on his quaking throne, that I, Michael Fane, of Lyme Regis, in the county of Dorset, fell headlong, as it were, and quite unwittingly, into such a pother of adventure, mystery, and trouble, as few men--let alone a youth, as I then was--may hope to come through with their lives. That, however, by a rare good fortune, having been my lot, I am minded, now in these peaceful days, when good King William rules us with a firm, wise hand, to set down, for all of you who care to read it, a full and true account of what befell me in those throbbing months of blood and warfare. To begin, then (as my old preceptor, Master Pencraft, used to put it), at the right end of the rope, I was summoned before breakfast on that bright June morning to my father’s study, in our old house, The Havering, just outside the town, where we two lived together, my mother having died three years before. Now, although we were ever early risers at The Havering, I had never known my father require me to attend on him at such an hour (it being scarcely half-past six); but recollecting that I was eighteen that very day, the thought of some present being at the bottom of the matter added speed to the steps of filial duty as I hurried to the study.