get in the first blow,
master. Look out for their daggers."

Now I had never been engaged in a fight since the days when Jasper and I
occasionally came to fisticuffs with the village boys at Beechcot, but
I felt my blood warm at the notion of combat, and so I sprang in between
the two desperadoes who were busy at the left side of the coach, and
laid my staff about their ears with hearty good-will. They were trying
to drag an old man from the coach when we came up, and were threatening
him with what I took to be the most horrible of curses. I hit one of
them fair and square on the shoulder before he knew of my presence, and
he immediately turned and fled, howling like a beaten dog. The other
turned on me with a cruel-looking knife, but I knocked it out of his
hand with a blow that must have broken his wrist, and he too fled into
the woods with a fearful imprecation. Meanwhile, Pharaoh had beaten off
his men on the other side; one was limping along the highway howling
with pain, and the other lay on the ground senseless. We had carried the
fight with sharp and startling effect.

Inside the coach sat an old gentleman and a young girl, and both were so
frightened, that when we assisted them to alight they were nearly
speechless, and could only sigh and moan. Presently, however, the young
lady found her tongue, and began to pour out an astonishingly rapid flow
of words to me, none of which I understood, but which I took to be
expressions of gratitude.

"Say naught," whispered Pharaoh in my ear, "I will talk to them in their
own lingo. Do not let them see that we are English."

"Noble gentlemen," said the old man, presently recovering his speech, "I
know not how to thank you for this valuable assistance. Caramba! if you
had not appeared when you did we should certainly have had our throats
cut. Isabella mia, art thou safe? Did those knaves lay finger on thee?"

"They did but seize me by the wrist, father," answered the young lady.
"But yourself--you are not hurt?"

"Nay, child, I called too loudly for that. But certainly another moment
would have been our last. Senor, is yonder villain dead?"

"Nay," said Pharaoh in his best Spanish, "he breathes, Senor, and will
come to presently."

"I am beholden, deeply beholden to you both, gentlemen. Dios! to think
that I should be unable to travel on even so short a journey with
safety! And my own servants--where are they, rascals and poltroons that
they are. Ho! Pedro, Chispa,