He waited until De la Zouch began to tire before he exerted himself.  The time came at last, and then with a few quick strokes he laid his foeman before him on the ground.

“Strike!” shouted a score of voices.  “Strike!”

The victor uplifted his sword, and poised it high above his head to bring it down with all his might.  The people waited with throbbing hearts to witness the stroke which should finish the combat, but instead of striking Manners paused and turned round.

“Strike, man, strike!” yelled a chorus of onlookers.

Humbly bowing before Dorothy, he magnanimously declared that the fate of his rival rested with her.

“’Tis a tournament, not a murder,” decided Doll promptly; “you have proved your cause, and if your foe will yield we are ready to spare him.”

Amid the plaudits of the crowd, Manners bowed low upon his knee, kissed the hand held graciously out towards him.  He murmured his perfect acquiescence to her will, and was about to pass out of the ring, an easy victor, when a horseman rode in, and without in anyway announcing himself, he sprang off his horse and scanned the company.

“What does this fellow want?” growled Sir George, as with knitted eyebrows he scrutinised the intruder.  “Thou art a Royal messenger,” he added, turning to the man, who had advanced until he stood before the baron.

There was little sympathy between the Court at London and the King of the Peak, and the baron surmised little good from the arrival of the courtier.  As the latter urged his horse through the crowd, and entered the arena, Sir George anticipated trouble.

“I want the King of the Peak,” replied the new comer.

“I am Sir George Vernon.”

“Then,” replied the other, “I deliver into thine hand this summons, which cites thee to appear at Westminster to answer the charge of slaying Mary Durden.”

The baron started with surprise, and thought for a moment of laying violent hands upon the man, but a moment’s reflection convinced him of the unwisdom of such an act.

“And if I refuse to come,” he doggedly said, “what then?”

“Then you do so at your peril,” he replied, and leaping again upon his horse, he departed as suddenly as he had appeared, leaving the awe-stricken assembly to disperse with much less pleasure than they had anticipated from the scene of such an exciting exhibition of manly prowess.

CHAPTER IX.

At the cock tavern, London.

  London! the needy villain’s general home,
  The common sewer of Paris and of Rome. 
  Here malice, rapine, accident conspire,
  And now a rabble rages, now a fire;
  Their ambush mere relentless villains lay,
  And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.

  Johnson.

Five days after the tournament had taken place, two travellers reined in their steeds at the gates of the Cock Hostelry, just within the Temple Bar.  They were dusty with hard riding, and evidently in no good humour with themselves nor with anyone with whom they were brought into contact—­a result doubtless attributable to the discomforts of a long journey on roads rough enough to try the patience of any man.