Page:Wren--The young stagers.djvu/26

8 keep thy head and all the rest of thee for, as I said before, this is Koil-and-Poggle Ford, and Sack-Son, I am a perfect Gale! Lay on—and no prodding in the stummick"

Ill fared it then with Roderic Dhu, as d(h)uly laid down in the poem and shown forth in the picture.

It was a truly Homeric combat, and when Brodrick Two got a nasty crack across the knuckles, he only put his sword in his other hand the while he sucked them. But his eye flashed fire.

"I'll be Fizz-James next time," he panted, as he received, but recked not of, a wound. Apparently Fitz-James concluded that the best thing to do, in view of this threatened change of rôle, was to make hay while the sun shone, for, as, with a heart-rending groan, Roderic sank to earth and closed his eyes, he dealt him a superfluous and uncalled for coup de grâce. Worse, it partook of the nature of a prohibited "prod in the stummick". Too immersed in the enthralling business of artistic death-throes to protest, Roderic but rolled over on to the illegally as-