“The lie in thy throat, thou prick-eared canting Roundhead!” replied the old soldier:--“thou foul-mouthed hypocrite! is it for thou to rate sinners after rattling out oaths like a shameless brawler in a bear garden? I am a cleaner spoken man than thou, blessings on him who taught me, and more honest than to play traitor to my king:--God bless his gracious Majesty! I wish him no better luck than that all the Roundheads, militia, and train-bands, horse and foot, were just such a set of raw awkward spoonies as yourself.” While he was yet speaking, Cuthbert’s jade, as if moved by the very spirit of mischief, shook her ears and was down in the middle of the loose dusty road, without better warning than before; for the attention of Cuthbert being quite taken up by his anger with the old soldier, he was again too late to prevent it. The dust plentifully adhered to his legs, thighs, and saddle bags. He instantly dismounted in a rage, kicked the beast up again, drove it forward, and, turning short round upon the old man, in a fury, said,-- “If it were not for your age and grey hairs, you insolent old vagabond, I would rap your pate smartly with my cudgel.” “That were easier spoken than done,” rejoined the old man, holding his quarter staff lightly in a defensive posture. A little dog, which accompanied the old man, perceiving by these actions, and by the loudness of their speech, that the stranger was quarrelling with his master, flew at Cuthbert with a sharp and angry bark, than which perhaps nothing does more inflame the rising choler; he, therefore, struck at the little animal furiously, and the end of his cudgel inflicted on it a sharp stroke, which sent it howling and yelping behind its master. The old soldier, without a moment’s loss of time, resented this injury by so heavy and well placed a blow on the head of Cuthbert, that his steeple-crowned hat was knocked off; and had it not been defended within by the strong bars of iron with which it had been recently fitted for the wars, he would have gotten a severe bruise. “He that touches my dog touches me,” said the old man: “I am sorry that I did not make thee feel it.” The quarter staff of the beggar had, by his stumbling and over-reaching himself, flown out of his hand, and his old rabbit-skin cap had fallen upon the ground:--a fine polished head thinly strewn with grey hairs lay bare and exposed.--“There, you may crack it if you will now,” he added, raising the ineffectual defence of his arm. “I am a man,” said Cuthbert, “and not a brute: I would not strike thee for all my hot words; but I have been beside myself with passion. May God forgive me for my great offence against him--and do you forgive me for the hard things I said to you, and the stroke I gave your dog.”