“Marry, he looketh it — mark his eye!” “Pluck the lad from him — to the horse-pond wi’ the cub!”

Instantly a hand was laid upon the Prince, under the impulse of this happy thought; as instantly the stranger’s long sword was out and the meddler went to the earth under a sounding thump with the flat of it. The next moment a score of voices shouted, “Kill the dog! Kill him! Kill him!” and the mob closed in on the warrior, who backed himself against a wall and began to lay about him with his long weapon like a madman.

His victims sprawled this way and that, but the mob-tide poured over their prostrate forms and dashed itself against the champion with undiminished fury.

His moments seemed numbered,