he smeared the face of his opponent with the mud on his mop.

[Illustration: "ARE YOU READY?"]

"Zounds! master what are you about?" cried the fencing-master.

"Marry! I am teaching you new tactics." Releasing his sword, the
fencing-master ran to the other end of the platform and, seizing a
broadsword, cried:

"I will have it out with you with these."

At this, the old man cried in a terrible voice:

"Stop, sir! hitherto you see I have only played with you and done you
no hurt; but if you come at me with the broadsword, I will take
your life."

The alarmed fencing-master cried out:

"Who can you be? You must be either Goffe, Whalley, or the devil, for
there are no others in England who could beat me."

In order to fully explain the meaning of the fencing-master's words, we
beg leave to step aside from our story for a moment and recall some
historical events which have a bearing upon it. Of the judges who tried
and condemned Charles I. three escaped to America. One was Edward
Whalley, who had first won laurels in the field at Naseby, had even
enjoyed the confidence of Cromwell, and remained a friend of the
Independents; one was William Goffe, a firm friend of the family of
Cromwell, a good soldier and an ardent partisan, but ignorant of the
true principles of freedom. Endicott was governor when these two arrived
in Boston. Goffe, with his child, came first, but was known as soon as
he entered the town, and lodging was refused him at every house until he
came to the home of the kind Puritan, Mathew Stevens, who sheltered the
man and his child, though it might endanger his own head.

Charles II. pursued the murderers of his father with unrelenting fury.
Whalley and Goffe both had been generals in the army of Cromwell and
were men of undoubted courage. When warrants came for them from England,
they hurried across the country to New Haven, where it was esteemed a
crime against God to betray a wanderer or give up an outcast; yet such
diligent search was made for them, that they never knew security. For a
time they went in secrecy from house to house, for awhile concealing
themselves in a mill, sometimes in clefts of rocks by the seaside, and
for weeks together, and even for months, they dwelt in a cave in the
forest. Great rewards were offered for their apprehension. Indians as
well as English were urged to scour the woods in quest of their
hiding-place.

John Dixwell, the third regicide, was more fortunate. He w