The Master of Appleby | Page 5

dry crust to offer a friend. You spoke of a
lady; who was she? Or was that only another way of telling me to mind
my own affairs?"
"Oh, as to that; the lady was real enough, and Falconnet did grossly
asperse her. But I know not who she is, nor aught about her, save that
she is sweet and fair and good to look upon."
"Young?"
"Aye."
"And you say you do not know her? Let me see her through your eyes
and mayhap I can name her for you."
"That I can not. Mr. Peale's best skill would be none too great for the
painting of any picture that should do her justice. But she is small, with
the airs and graces of a lady of the quality; also, she has witching blue
eyes, and hair that has the glint of summer sunshine in it. Also, she sits
a horse as if bred to the saddle."
To my amazement, Jennifer leaped up with an oath and flung his pipe
into the fire.
"Curse him!" he cried. "And he dared lay a foul tongue to her, you say?
Tell me what he said! I have a good right to know!"
I shook my head. "Nay, Richard; I may not repeat it to you, since you
are the man's second. Truly, there is more than this at the back of our
quarrel; but of itself it was enough, and more than enough, inasmuch as

the lady had just done him the honor to recognize him."
"His words--his very words, Jack, if you love me!"
"No; the quarrel is mine."
"By God! it is not yours!" he stormed, raging back and forth before the
fire. "What is Margery Stair to you, Jack Ireton?"
I smiled, beginning now to see some peephole in this millstone of
mystery.
"Margery Stair? She is no more than a name to me, I do assure you; the
daughter of the man who sits in my father's seat at Appleby Hundred."
"But you are going to fight for her!" he retorted.
"Am I? I pledge you my word I did not know it. But in any case I
should fight Sir Francis Falconnet; aye, and do my best to kill him, too.
Sit you down and fill another pipe. Whatever the quarrel, it is mine."
"Mayhap; but it is mine, too," he broke in, angrily. "At all events, I'll
see this king's volunteer well hanged before I second him in such a
cause."
"That as you choose. But you are bound in honor, are you not?"
"No." He filled a fresh pipe, lighted it with a coal from the hearth, and
puffed away in silence for a time. When he spoke again it was not as
Falconnet's next friend.
"What you have told me puts a new face on the matter, Jack. Sir
Francis may find him another second where he can. If he has aught to
say, I shall tell him plain he lied to me about the quarrel, as he did.
Now who is there to see fair play on your side, John Ireton?"
At the question an overwhelming sense of my own sorry case grappled
me. Fifteen years before, I had left Appleby Hundred and my native
province as well befriended as the son of Roger Ireton was sure to be.

And now--
"Dick, my lad, I am like to fight alone," said I.
He swore again at that; and here, lest I should draw my loyal Richard as
he was not, let me say, once for all, that his oaths were but the
outgushings of a warm and impulsive heart, rarely bitter, and never, as I
believe, backed by surly rancor or conscious irreverence.
"That you shall not, Jack," he asserted, stoutly. "I must be a-gallop now
to tell this king's captain to look elsewhere for his next friend; but
to-morrow morning I'll meet you in the road between this and the Stair
outlands, and we'll fare on together."
After this he would brook no more delay; and when Tomas had fetched
his horse I saw him mount and ride away under the low-hanging
maples--watched him fairly out of sight in the green and gold twilight
of the great forest before turning back to my lonely hearth and its
somber reminders.
I stirred the dying embers, throwing on a pine knot for better light.
Then I took down my father's sword from its deer-horn brackets over
the chimney-piece, and set myself to fine its edge and point with a bit
of Scotch whinstone. It was a good blade; a true old Andrea Ferara got
in battle in the seventeenth century by one of the Nottingham Iretons.
I whetted it well and carefully. It was not that I feared my enemy's
strength of wrist or tricks