'

'Well, fight away, then, and win. I have promised Miss Lavington
not to lift a hand in the business.'

'Then you're a lucky man, sir. But the squire's game is his own,
and we must do our duty by our master.'

There was a rustle in the bushes, and a tramp of feet on the turf.

'There they are, sir, sure enough. The Lord keep us from murder
this night!' And Tregarva pulled off his neckcloth, and shook his
huge limbs, as if to feel that they were all in their places, in a
way that augured ill for the man who came across him.

They turned the corner of a ride, and, in an instant, found
themselves face to face with five or six armed men, with blackened
faces, who, without speaking a word, dashed at them, and the fight
began; reinforcements came up on each side, and the engagement
became general.

'The forest-laws were sharp and stern,
The forest blood was keen,
They lashed together for life and death
Beneath the hollies green.

'The metal good and the walnut-wood
Did soon in splinters flee;
They tossed the orts to south and north,
And grappled knee to knee.

'They wrestled up, they wrestled down,
They wrestled still and sore;
The herbage sweet beneath their feet
Was stamped to mud and gore.'

And all the while the broad still moon stared down on them grim and
cold, as if with a saturnine sneer at the whole humbug; and the
silly birds about whom all this butchery went on, slept quietly over
their heads, every one with his head under his wing. Oh! if
pheasants had but understanding, how they would split their sides
with chuckling and crowing at the follies which civilised Christian
men perpetrate for their precious sake!

Had I the pen of Homer (though they say he never used one), or even
that of the worthy who wasted precious years in writing a Homer
Burlesqued, what heroic exploits might not I immortalise! In every
stupid serf and cunning ruffian there, there was a heart as brave as
Ajax's own; but then they fought with sticks instead of lances, and
hammered away on fustian jackets instead of brazen shields; and,
therefore, poor fellows, they were beneath 'the dignity of poetry,'
whatever that may mean. If one of your squeamish 'dignity-of-
poetry' critics had just had his head among the gun-stocks for five
minutes that night, he would have found it grim tragic earnest
enough; not without a touch of fun though, here and there.

Lancelot leant against