"I can and shall. It matters not to you or to any what he is or has been." "Why?" "Because, as God gives me strength and skill, I shall presently run him through, and so his account will be squared once for all with all men--and all women, as well." "God speed you," quoth my loyal ally. "I knew not your quarrel with him was so bitter." "It is to the death." "So it seems. In that case, if by any accident he--" I divined what he would say and broke in upon him. "Nay, Dick; if he thrusts me out, you must not take up my quarrel. I know not where you learned to twirl the steel, or how, but you may be sure he would spit you like a trussed fowl in the first bout. I have seen him kill a man who was reckoned the best short sword in my old regiment of the Blues." "Content yourself," said my young Hotspur, grandly. "If you spare him he shall answer to me for that thing he said of Madge Stair; this though I know not what it was he said." I smiled at his fuming ardor, and glancing at the pair of pistols hanging from his saddle-bow, asked if he could shoot. "Indifferent well." "Then make him challenge you and choose your own weapon. 'Tis your only hope, and poor enough at that, I fear. I have heard he can clip a guinea at ten paces." From that we fell silent again, being but a little way from the rendezvous, and so continued until, at a sudden turn in the road, we came in sight of a rude barricade of felled trees barring the way. Jennifer saw it first and pulled up short, loosing his pistols in their cases as he drew rein. "'Ware the wood!" he said sharply, and none too soon, for even as he spoke the glade at our left filled as by magic with a motley troop deploying into the road as to surround us. "Now who are these?" I asked; "friends or foes?" "Foes who will hang you in your own halter strap; Jan Howart's Tories--the same that burned the Westcotts in their cabin a fortnight since. Will your horse take that barricade, think you?" "Aye,--standing, if need be." "Then at them, in God's name. Charge!" It needed but the word and we were in the thick of it. I remembered my old field-marshal's maxim, _Von Feinden umringt, ist die Zeit zu zerschmettern_; and truly, being so plentifully outnumbered, we did strike both first and hard. A line of the ragged horsemen strung itself awkwardly across the road to guard the flimsy barricade, and at this we charged, stirrup to stirrup. In the dash there was a scattering volley from the wood, answered instantly by the bellowings of Jennifer's great pistols; and then we came to the steel. It was my first fleshing of the good old Andrea, and a better balanced blade I had never swung in hand-to-hand mellay. As we closed with the half-dozen defenders of the barrier, Jennifer reined aside to give me room to play to right and left, and in the midst of it went nigh to death because he held his hand to watch a cut and double thrust of mine.