The moon swam from behind a cloud, and her over ripe and fading light seemed to the eyes of Richard to gather upon the figure before him and there revive.  The youth had on a doublet of some reddish colour, ill brought out by the moonlight, but its silver lace and the rapier hilt inlaid with silver shone the keener against it.  A short cloak hung from his left shoulder, trimmed also with silver lace, and a little cataract of silver fringe fell from the edges of his short trousers into the wide tops of his boots, which were adorned with ruffles.  He wore a large collar of lace, and cuffs of the same were folded back from his bare hands.  A broad-brimmed beaver hat, its silver band fastened with a jewel holding a plume of willowy feathers, completed his attire, which he wore with just the slightest of a jaunty air.  It was hardly the dress for a walk at midnight, but he had come in his mother’s carriage, and had to go home without it.

Alas now for Richard’s share in the freedom to which he had of late imagined himself devoted!  No sooner had the words last spoken entered his ears than he was but a driven slave ready to rush into any quarrel with the man who spoke them.  Ere he had gone three paces he had stepped in front of him.

‘Whatever rights mistress Dorothy may have given you,’ he said, ’she had none to transfer in respect of my father.  What do you mean by calling him a roundhead?’

‘Why, is he not one?’ asked the youth, simply, keeping his ground, in spite of the unpleasant proximity of Richard’s person.  ’I am sorry to have wronged him, but I mistook him for a ringleader of the same name.  I heartily beg your pardon.’

‘You did not mistake,’ said Richard stupidly.

‘Then I did him no wrong,’ rejoined the youth, and once more would have gone his way.

But Richard, angrier than ever at finding he had given him such an easy advantage, moved with his movement, and kept rudely in front of him, provoking a quarrel—­in clownish fashion, it must be confessed.

‘By heaven,’ said Scudamore, ’if Dorothy had not begged me not to fight with you—­,’ and as he spoke he slipped suddenly past his antagonist, and walked swiftly away.  Richard plunged after him, and seized him roughly by the shoulder.  Instantaneously he wheeled on the very foot whence he was taking the next stride, and as he turned his rapier gleamed in the moonlight.  The same moment it left his hand, he scarce knew how, and flew across the hedge.  Richard, who was unarmed, had seized the blade, and, almost by one and the same movement of his wrist, wrenched the hilt from the grasp of his adversary, and flung the thing from him.  Then closing with the cavalier, slighter and less skilled in such encounters, the roundhead almost instantly threw him upon the turf that bordered the road.

‘Take that for drawing on an unarmed man,’ he said.

No reply came.  The youth lay stunned.

Then compassion woke in the heart of the angry Richard, and he hastened to his help.  Ere he reached him, however, he made an attempt to rise, but only to stagger and fall again.