The jerk of your charger's movement even now might have drawn your trigger, and so deprived Monmouth of an old and tried soldier.' 'There would be much weight in your contention,' my friend answered, 'were it not that I now bethink me that I had forgot to recharge my pistol since discharging it at that great yellow beast yesternight.' Decimus Saxon shook his head sadly.

'I doubt we shall never make a soldier of you,' he remarked.

'You fall from your horse if the brute does bit change his step, you show a levity which will not jump with the gravity of the true soldado, you present empty petronels as a menace, and finally, you crave permission to tie your armour--armour which the Cid himself might be proud to wear--around the neck of your horse.

Yet you have heart and mettle, I believe, else you would not be here.' 'Gracias, Signor!' cried Reuben, with a bow which nearly unhorsed him; 'the last remark makes up for all the rest, else had I been forced to cross blades with you, to maintain my soldierly repute.' 'Touching that same incident last night,' said Saxon, 'of the chest filled, as I surmise, with gold, which I was inclined to take as lawful plunder, I am now ready to admit that I may have shown an undue haste and precipitance, considering that the old man treated us fairly.' 'Say no more of it,' I answered, 'if you will but guard against such impulses for the future.' 'They do not properly come from me,' he replied, 'but from Will Spotterbridge, who was a man of no character at all.' 'And how comes he to be mixed up in the matter ?' I asked curiously.
'Why, marry, in this wise.

My father married the daughter of this same Will Spotterbridge, and so weakened a good old stock by an unhealthy strain.