“If I had not before known it, My Lord,” she replied haughtily, “it would be plain to me now as I see forty cowards hesitating to attack a lone man. What other man in all England could stand thus against forty? A lion at bay with forty jackals yelping at his feet.” “Enough, girl,” cried the King, “what be this knave to thee?” “He loves me, Your Majesty,” she replied proudly, “and I, him.” “Thou lov’st this low-born cut-throat, Bertrade,” cried Henry. “Thou, a De Montfort, the daughter of my sister; who have seen this murderer’s accursed mark upon the foreheads of thy kin; thou have seen him flaunt his defiance in the King’s, thy uncle’s, face, and bend his whole life to preying upon thy people; thou lov’st this monster?” “I love him, My Lord King.” “Thou lov’st him, Bertrade?” asked Philip of France in a low tone, pressing nearer to the girl. “Yes, Philip,” she said, a little note of sadness and finality in her voice; but her eyes met his squarely and bravely. Instantly, the sword of the young Prince leaped from its scabbard, and facing De Montfort and the others, he backed to the side of Norman of Torn. “That she loves him be enough for me to know, my gentlemen,” he said. “Who takes the man Bertrade de Montfort loves must take Philip of France as well.” Norman of Torn laid his left hand upon the other’s shoulder. “No, thou must not do this thing, my friend,” he said. “It be my fight and I will fight it alone. Go, I beg of thee, and take her with thee, out of harm’s way.” As they argued, Simon de Montfort and the King had spoken together, and, at a word from the former, the soldiers rushed suddenly to the attack again. It was a cowardly strategem, for they knew that the two could not fight with the girl between them and their adversaries. And thus, by weight of numbers, they took Bertrade de Montfort and the Prince away from Norman of Torn without a blow being struck, and then the little, grim, gray, old man stepped forward. “There be but one sword in all England, nay in all the world that can, alone, take Norman of Torn,” he said, addressing the King, “and that sword be mine. Keep thy cattle back, out of my way.” And, without waiting for a reply, the grim, gray man sprang in to engage him whom for twenty years he had called son. Norman of Torn came out of his corner to meet his new-found enemy, and there, in the apartment of the Queen of England in the castle of Battel, was fought such a duel as no man there had ever seen before, nor is it credible that its like was ever fought before or since. The world’s two greatest swordsmen: teacher and pupil—the one with the strength of a young bull, the other with the cunning of an old gray fox, and both with a lifetime of training behind them, and the lust of blood and hate before them—thrust and parried and cut until those that gazed awestricken upon the marvellous swordplay scarcely breathed in the tensity of their wonder.