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234 In a little time your wrist will be stronger and your cut more shrewd. There will be some of us at the "Rose de Guienne" to-night, which is two doors from the hotel of the "Half Moon," so if you would drain a cup with a few simple archers you will be right welcome.'

Alleyne promised to be there if his duties would allow, and then, slipping through the crowd, he rejoined Ford, who was standing in talk with the two strangers, who had now reached their own doorstep.

'Brave young signor,' cried the tall man, throwing his arms round Alleyne, 'how can we thank you enough for taking our parts against those horrible drunken barbarians? what should we have done without you? My Tita would have been dragged away, and my head would have been shivered into a thousand fragments.'

'Nay, I scarce think that they would have mishandled you so,' said Alleyne in surprise. 'Ho, ho!' cried he with a high crowing laugh, 'it is not the head upon my shoulders that I think of. Cospetto! no. It is the head under my arm which you have preserved.'

'Perhaps the signori would deign to come under our roof, father,' said the maiden. 'If we bide here, who knows that some fresh tumult may not break out?'

'Well said, Tita! Well said, my girl! I pray you, sirs, to honour my unworthy roof so far. A light, Giacomo! There are five steps up. Now, two more. So! Here we are at last in safety. Corpo di Baccho! I would not have given ten maravedi for my head when those children of the devil were pushing us against the wall. Tita mia, you have been a brave girl, and it was better that you should be pulled and pushed than that my head should be broken.'

'Yes, indeed, father,' said she earnestly.

'But those English! Ach! Take a Goth, a Hun, and a Vandal; mix them together and add a Barbary rover; then take this creature and make him drunk—and you have an Englishman. My God! were ever such people upon earth? What place is free from them? I hear that they swarm in