"I can't say that he did."
"I am sure he has had opportunities enough."
"I'm not going to deny that Hugh's a fine fellow, Robin; but I remember,
long ago, ay, thirteen or fourteen years past, before he entered on the
regular buccaneering trade, there wasn't a firmer Cavalier amongst the
whole of us Kentish men. Blazes! how he fought at Marston! But a few
years' sunning off the hot Havannah either scorches the spirit out of a
man, or burns it in."
"And what reason have you to think that Hugh is not now a good
Cavalier?"
"Pshaw! he grows old, and it's no good trying to pull Oliver down. He's
charmed. Ay, you may laugh; but no one of us could have escaped the
bullet of Miles Syndercomb, to say nothing of dark John Talbot:--I tell
ye, he is spell-guarded. Hugh is a knowing one, and has some plan
a-foot, or he wouldn't keep beating about this coast as he does, after
being so long from it, and using every county but Sussex and Kent. I
wonder, too, what placed you, Master Robin, in Burrell of Burrell's
service: I thought you were a man of taste till then."
Robin again grinned; and, as his wide mouth literally extended from ear
to ear, his face looked, as it were, divided by some accident; so
separate did the chin appear from the upper portion of the countenance.
"If you wo'n't talk," growled out the trooper, "I hope you will pay
those who do so for your amusement."
"Thou wouldst have me believe, then, thou art no genuine disinterested
talker. Ah! Roupall, Roupall! acquaintance with courts has taught me,
that nature in the first place, and society in the second, have imposed
upon us mortals two most disagreeable necessities: the one is that of
eating; the other, that of talking. Now nature is a tyrant, and society
is a tyrant; and I, being a tyrant-hater----"
"'Slife, man--or mongrel--or whatever you choose to call your twisted
carcass," interrupted Roupall, angrily, "hold your jibber. I wonder Joan
Cromwell did not seize upon you, and keep you as her chief ape, while
you were making your courtly acquaintance. A pretty figure for courts,
truly!--ah! ah! ah!" As he laughed, he pointed his finger scornfully
towards Robin Hays, who, however little he might care to jest upon his
own deformity, was but ill inclined to tolerate those who even hinted at
his defects. As the trooper persevered, his victim grew pale and
trembled with suppressed rage. The man perceived the effect his cruel
mockery produced, and continued to revile and take to pieces the
mis-shapen portions of his body with most merciless anatomy. Robin
offered, in return, neither observation nor reproach;--at first
trembling and change of colour were the only indications of his
feelings--then he moved restlessly on his seat, and his bright and
deeply sunken eyes gleamed with untamable malignity; but, as Roupall
followed one jeer more brutal than the rest, with a still more
boisterous laugh, and, in the very rapture of his success, threw himself
back in his chair, the tiger spirit of Robin burst forth to its full
extent: he sprang upon the trooper so suddenly, that the Goliath was
perfectly conquered, and lay upon the floor helpless as an overgrown and
overfed Newfoundland dog, upon whose throat a sharp and bitter terrier
has fastened. At length, after much exertion, he succeeded in standing
erect against the wall of the apartment, though still unable to
disengage Robin's long arms and bony fingers from his throat, where he
hung like a mill-stone: it was some minutes ere the gigantic man had
power to throw from him the attenuated being whom, on ordinary
occasions, he could have lifted between his finger and thumb.