Of the Man from Cornwall
“Your spurs clank,” says he. “You had best take ’em off, my friend.”
“An’ you hold not your tongue,” says I, “it will answer my spurs well enough.”
He laughed.
“Have at you,” says I, and made a thrust for the sound. But he must have broke away at the moment, for my point took nothing but empty air, and I was wellnigh my length upon the floor.
For himself, he made no noise, and a silence fell upon the dungeon, broken by little sounds and starts from everywhere, for the wind and the rain were playing without, and the human noises within, if there were any, I might not dissever from these signals of the storm. And so for a time there was no transaction upon the part of either. What he was at, I know not, nor indeed had I the least inkling of my own intention, save to watch and to listen in jealous circumspection for my own person. It was like no fight upon which I was ever engaged, and I did not favour the notion of it. For there was I on my side waiting in
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