“That, with your leave, sir, is what I am come to try.” “And this rascal?” He turned on Billy. Billy heard not a word, of course, yet answered readily— “Why, since your honor is so pleasantly minded—let it be cider.” Now the first effect of this, deliver’d with all force of lung, was to make the big man sit bolt upright and staring: recovering speech, however, he broke into a volley of blasphemous curses. All this while the man in buff had scarce lifted his eyes off the map. But now he looks up—and I saw at the first glance that the two men hated each other. “I think,” said he quietly, “my Lord Mohun has forgot to ask the _gentleman’s_ name.” “My name is Marvel, sir—John Marvel.” I answer’d him with a bow. “Hey!”—and dropping his pen he starts up and grasps my hand—“Then ’tis you I have never thanked for His Gracious Majesty’s letter.” “The General Hopton?” cried I. “Even so, sir. My lord,” he went on, still holding my hand and turning to his companion, “let me present to you the gentleman that in January sav’d your house of Bocconnoc from burning at the hands of the rebels—whom God confound this day!” He lifted his hat. “Amen,” said I, as his lordship bowed, exceedingly sulky. But I did not value his rage, being hot with joy to be so beprais’d by the first captain (as I yet hold) on the royal side. Who now, not without a sly triumph, flung the price of Billy’s cider on the table and, folding up his map, address’d me again— “Master Marvel, the fight to-day will lie but little with the horse—or so I hope. You will do well, if your wish be to serve us best, to leave your mare behind. The troop which my Lord Mohun and I command together is below. But Sir Bevill Grenville, who has seen and is interested in you, has the first claim: and I would not deny you the delight to fight your first battle under so good a master. His men are, with Sir John Berkeley’s troop, a little to the westward: and if you are ready I will go some distance with you, and put you in the way to find him. My lord, may we look for you presently?” The Lord Mohun nodded, surly enough: so, Billy’s cider being now drunk and Molly given over to an ostler, we set out down the hill together, Billy shouldering a pipe and walking after with the groom that led Sir Ralph’s horse. Be sure the General’s courtly manner of speech set my blood tingling. I seem’d to grow a full two inches taller; and when, in the vale, we parted, he directing me to the left, where through a gap I could see Sir Bevill’s troop forming at some five hundred paces’ distance, I felt a very desperate warrior indeed; and set off at a run, with Billy behind me.