aptain's prowess, to which my good
friend listened with an air of approval that amused me mightily.
And then the mayor came to the point, and in the name of the
corporation and all decent citizens of Shrewsbury besought the
captain to suppress the disturbers of their peace.

"Hum! ha!" said the captain, rubbing his nose reflectively. "I am
an old man, Mr. Mayor: methinks this is work for younger blood than
mine."

"No, no!" cried the company in chorus.

"We seed tha knock the steel from the hand of Master Bold there as
'twere a knitting needle," says the mayor, whose speech was as
broad as his figure.

"Well, well," says the captain, "I'll think of it, my friends. You
do me great honor, and I thank you for your visit."

The captain and I talked over the matter between ourselves, and the
upshot of our consultation was that we got together a little band
of his former pupils, and for several nights in succession we
perambulated the streets of Shrewsbury from the English to the
Welsh Bridge and from the Castle to the Quarry, with naked swords
and a martial air. But we had our exercise for nothing. The town
was as quiet as a graveyard, and the only disturber of the peace
that engaged our attention was poor Tom Jessopp, the drayman, who,
one night, having drunk more old October than was good for him,
encountered us as he was staggering home down Shoplatch, and
invited us, first to wet our whistles, and, on our declining, to
fight him for a pint. We escorted him home and put him to bed, not
without some difficulties and inconveniences, and that was the
first and last of our adventures, the captain declaring that to
deal with topers was no work for a man of honor.

The very night after our company was thus dissolved the mayor was
knocked down at the foot of Swan Hill by the Town Wall, gagged and
trussed, and laid upon his own doorstep, where he was found by the
maidservant in the morning, having wrought himself to the verge of
apoplexy by his struggles to rid himself of his bonds. He besought
the captain with tears of outraged dignity to resume his
guardianship of the town; but the old warrior merely rubbed his
nose and spoke of rheumatism.

The outrages occurred only at intervals, and ceased altogether
during the college terms, when Dick Cludde was absent, so that we
were not far wrong in our inference that he was the fount and
origin of the deeds of lawlessness. The townsfolk, you may be sure,
did not love him; nor