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CHAPTER XLII.
RECEPTION IN CORNWALL.
Skelton. 'Tis but going to sea, and, leaping ashore, cut ten or twelve thousand unnecessary throats, fire seven or eight towns, take half a dozen cities, get into the market-place, crown him. Richard the Fourth, and the business is finished.
Am I not king?
Awake, thou coward majesty! thou sleepest.
Is not the king's name forty thousand names?
These doughty leaders drew out their followers in a plain just without Bodmin. There were about two hundred men decently clad from the remnants of the mercer's wares, tolerably well armed and disciplined by Trereife; this troop obtained the distinction of being selected as King Richard's body-guard. Skelton was their captain, a rare commander, whose real merit was that he felt happiest when stuck close as a burr to Trereife; for at heart he was an arrant coward, though a loud braggart, and talked of slaying his thousands, while the very wounding of his doublet had made him wince.
Heron was brave in his way; a true Cornishman, he could wrestle and cast his antagonist with the strength of a lion; he loved better, it is true, to trust to his arm than to his sword, which, in spite of his strength, Trereife always made fly from his hand in their fencing lessons; not the less did he consider himself a gallant knight, and had cut up many a yard of crimson cramoisy to make a rich suit for himself. He wore Monina's glove in his cap and large yellow roses at his knees; he called himself generalissimo, and marshalled under him full three thousand men, who in truth had
Never set a squadron in the field
Nor the division of a battle knew
More than a spinster;
but they were sturdy discontented spirits, who valued life at its
