Page:Waverley Novels, vol. 22 (1831).djvu/95

 you here? Are you come to triumph over the innocence you have destroyed, as the vulture or carrion-crow comes to batten on the lamb, whose eyes it has first plucked out?—Or are you come to encounter the merited vengeance of an honest man?—Draw, dog, and defend thyself!”

Tressilian drew his sword as he spoke, but Varney only laid his hand on the hilt of his own, as he replied, “Thou art mad, Tressilian—I own appearances are against me, but by every oath a priest can make, or a man can swear, Mistress Amy Robsart hath had no injury from me; and in truth I were somewhat loath to hurt you in this cause—Thou know’st I can fight.”

“I have heard thee say so, Varney,” replied ‘Tressilian; “but now, methinks, I would fain have some better evidence than thine own word.”

“That shall not be lacking, if blade and hilt be but true to me,” answered Varney; and drawing his sword with the right hand, he threw his cloak around his left, and attacked Tressilian with a vigour which, for a moment, seemed to give him the advantage of the combat. But this advantage lasted not long. Tressilian added to a spirit determined on revenge, a hand and eye admirably well adapted to the use of the rapier; so that Varney, finding himself hard pressed in his turn, endeavoured to avail himself of his superior strength, by closing with his adversary. For this purpose, he hazarded the receiving one of Tressilian’s passes in his cloak, wrapt as it was around his arm, and ere his adversary could extricate his rapier thus entangled, he