No one had ever been able to complain that it was difficult to pick a quarrel with Frank Stokoe.  Not that he was quarrelsome—­far otherwise; but never was he known to shrink from any combat that was pressed on him, and on this occasion the venomous little foreigner found him most ready to oblige.  It wanted but a slight jostle, an Italian oath hissed out, a few words in broken English to the effect that big men were proverbially clumsy, and that bigness and courage were not always to be found united.  Stokoe knew very well who his assailant was, knew his reputation, and the slender chance the ordinary swordsman might expect to have against this foreigner’s devilish skill, but his weapon was unsheathed almost before the Italian had ceased to curse.  Cautiously keeping a check on his habitual impetuosity, calling to his aid every ounce of the skill he possessed, and content meanwhile if he could evade the vicious thrusts of his enemy, Stokoe for a time kept the fiery little man well at bay.  Irritated at length by the giant’s coolness, and by finding him, perhaps, not quite so easy a conquest as he had anticipated, unable to draw him on to expose himself by attacking, the Italian for a moment lost patience.  None other in England had given him so much trouble.  It was time this farce ended; he would spit the giant now.  Once, twice, thrice—­it was with the utmost difficulty that Stokoe saved himself from being run through the body, and once the sword of his enemy went through his clothes, grazing his ribs, and sending a warm stream trickling down his side.  Then, suddenly, again the Italian lunged.  This time it surely had been all over with Stokoe.  But the foot of the hectoring little foreigner slipped, or he stumbled owing to some slight inequality of the ground.  For a single instant the man was overbalanced and off his guard, and before he could recover, Frank Stokoe’s sword passed through his body, sending out of this world one who whilst in it had wrought much evil.

“Well done, Stokoe!  Old Northumberland for ever!” cried a voice from amongst the considerable crowd of spectators who had run up before the fight had been in progress many seconds.  “Well done, Stokoe!”

Here was danger greater even than that from which he had but now escaped.  He was recognised!  And for him to be recognised in London probably meant instant arrest, and an almost certain end on the gallows.  He was too deeply involved in the late Rebellion; King George’s Government would show him as little mercy as they had showed to his chief.

Stokoe glanced round uneasily as he wiped his sword, but it was not possible to say which in the group of spectators was the man who had given that compromising cry; it might be one of several who, to Stokoe’s extreme discomposure, seemed to look at him rather intently.  Time to be out of this, thought he; the farther he was from London the more freely he would breathe just at present, and the less chance