“Faith, and I will!” exclaimed Sir Toby, “and by all means stir on the youth to an answer. I think oxen and cart-ropes will not drag them together.” For he knew Sir Andrew had not a grain of courage in his whole body; and as for Orsino’s page, he looked far too soft and gentle to be in the least brave or daring. Sir Andrew wrote his challenge, but when finished it was such an extraordinary production that Sir Toby decided not to deliver it. “The behaviour of the young gentleman,” he said, “shows him to be of good capacity and breeding; therefore this letter, being so excellently ignorant, will not terrify him in the least; he will know it comes from a clodpole. I will deliver his challenge by word of mouth, give a notable report of Aguecheek’s valour, and drive the gentleman, who is so young I know he will readily believe it, into a most hideous opinion of his rage, skill, fury, and impetuosity. This will so frighten them both that they will kill each other by the look, like cockatrices.” What Sir Toby had planned came to pass, and he and Fabian were soon hugely enjoying the success of their joke. They first found Viola, and delivered Sir Andrew’s challenge, assuring her that he was terribly incensed, and was a most dangerous adversary. “If you hold your life at any price, betake you to your guard,” counselled Sir Toby, “for your opponent has everything that youth, strength, skill, and wrath can furnish a man with.” Poor Viola was in the greatest alarm on hearing of the encounter that awaited her; she would gladly have wriggled out of it if she could, but Sir Toby would listen to no excuses. “I will return again to the house, and desire some escort of the lady,” said Viola. “I am no fighter.” But Sir Toby insisted that she positively _must_ fight with Sir Andrew, that he had real ground of injury, and that if she declined to fight with him she would have to fight with himself, which would be just as dangerous. [Illustration: “I am no fighter.”] “This is as uncivil as strange,” said poor Viola, inwardly quaking with terror. “I beseech you, do me the courtesy to find out from the knight what my offence is; it must be some oversight on my part--certainly I have done nothing on purpose.” “I will do so,” said Sir Toby. “Signor Fabian, stay with this gentleman till my return.” Sir Toby went off in search of Sir Andrew, to whom he proceeded to give the most glowing account of the young page’s furious disposition, and his marvellous skill in fencing. Sir Andrew was in a perfect agony of fear. “If I thought he had been valiant and so cunning in fence, I would have seen him hanged before I would have challenged him!” he cried miserably. “Let him let the matter slip, and will give him my horse, Gray Capilet.”