You'd
have been killed if you had not killed. Did you think you were
fighting for the fun of it? You're squeamish as a woman."

Johan tried to recover his voice. He tried to stand erect.

"I did it well, did I not?" An unsteady laugh rang out. "The play
acting, I mean. You forget, Master Lindley, that I'm a player, that in
my parts I'm more often a woman than a man. And we actors are apt to
grow into the parts we oftenest counterfeit." Suddenly he staggered
and the sword clattered from his hand. But again he straightened
himself. "Would I gain applause as a woman, think you?"

"If it's play acting, have done with it," growled Lindley, whose wound
was hurting; who, in reality, was almost fainting from loss of blood.
"You've saved my life as well as your own, Johan. But we'll touch on
that later. There's no fear, is there, that your dead man will come to
life?"

The boy for the first time raised his eyes to Lindley's face. Even in
the darkness he could see that it was ghastly white and drawn with
pain. A nervous cry burst from his lips, and he stretched both arms
toward Lindley.

"Da--damn your play acting, boy," sputtered Lindley. "Nay, I mean not
to be so harsh. I'll--I'll not forget the debt I owe you either. But
you must help me to The Jolly Grig, where Marmaduke has skill enough
to tend my wound until I can reach London."

"But Master Ogilvie has skill in the care of wounds," cried Johan.
"Surely we are nearer Master Ogilvie's than The Jolly Grig. And
Mistress Judith will----"

"Nay, I'll not force myself on Mistress Judith in this way," answered
Lindley, petulantly.

"You are over considerate of Mistress Judith's feelings, even for a
lover," returned the boy.

"Ah, it's not Mistress Judith's feelings I'm considerate of," replied
Lindley. "She's capable of saying that I got the wound on purpose to
lie in her house, on purpose to demand her care."

Here Johan's unsteady laugh rang out once more.

"Indeed she's capable of that very thing, my master," he said, and as
he spoke he began to tear his long coat into strips.

"What are you doing that for?" demanded Lindley, leaning more and more
heavily against his horse's side.

"It's a bandage and a sling for your arm," answered the boy. "If you
will persist in the ride to The Jolly Grig, your arm must be tied so
that it will not bleed again."

"'Twill be a wonder if you do not faint away like a woman when you
touch the blood," scoffed Lindley.

"'Twil