so ask my pardon, sir, or choose another glaive and to it again.'
The young squire was deadly white from his exertions, both on the land and in the water. Soaking and stained, with a smear of blood on his white shoulder, and another on his brow, there was still in his whole pose and set of face the trace of an inflexible resolution. His opponent's duller and more material mind quailed before the fire and intensity of a higher spiritual nature.
'I had not thought that you had taken it so amiss,' said he awkwardly. 'It was but such a jest as we play upon each other, and, if you must have it so, I am sorry for it.'
'Then I am sorry too,' quoth Alleyne warmly, 'and here is my hand upon it.'
'And the none-meat horn has blown three times,' quoth Harcomb, as they all streamed in chattering groups from the ground. 'I know not what the prince's maître-de-cuisine will say or think. By my troth! master Ford, your friend here is in need of a cup of wine, for he hath drunk deeply of Garonne water. I had not thought from his fair face that he had stood to this matter so shrewdly.'
'Faith,' said Ford, 'this air of Bordeaux hath turned our turtle-dove into a game-cock. A milder or more courteous youth never came out of Hampshire.'
'His master also, as I understand, is a very mild and courteous gentleman,' remarked Harcomb; 'yet I do not think that they are either of them men with whom it is very safe to trifle.'
CHAPTER XXI
HOW AGOSTINO PISANO RISKED HIS HEAD
Even the squires table at the Abbey of St. Andrew's at Bordeaux was on a very sumptuous scale while the prince held his court there. Here first, after the meagre fare of Beaulieu and the stinted board of the Lady Loring, Alleyne learned
