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Updated: May 9, 2025
"Massa Humf'y Bold ridin' jest as far as Missus Cludde's at Penolver," said my guide, coming at this moment into the room with a plate of jams and part of a fowl. "Massa Bold a king's officer, and don't want do no talk wiv common man. Me do talk for massa." I laughed at the negro's officiousness, which the man did not appear to resent.
The presence of the man who had been Cludde's companion in the abduction must be obnoxious to her, and it seemed strange that she had not written to her friends in Spanish Town, and had allowed the report of a projected marriage with Cludde to pass unchecked.
I halted, and he sprang from the saddle and caught me by the hand. "By George! 'twas mighty fine of you, Joe," he cried, with kindling eyes. "I'll break Dick Cludde's head for him, I will, if ever I see him again. Who was the other villain? Lucy says there were two." "'Twas a long weasel-faced fellow," I said, after so slight a pause that it escaped Roger's perception.
Hating Cyrus as I did, and not without cause, as will be seen hereafter, I may be a trifle unjust in my recollection of him; but I seem to see again a weasel face, with a pair of little restless cunning eyes, and lips that were shaped to a perpetual sneer. As to the sharpness of his tongue I know my memory does not play me false: Dick Cludde's taunts bruised, but Cyrus Vetch's stung.
I broke away from Cludde's detaining arm, and ran to my old friend. "Ahoy ho!" he shouted jovially when he saw me; but when I put my fingers to my lips he dismounted clumsily, and met me with the whispered question, "What be in the wind, Master Bold?" I could not have taken ten minutes to possess him with the necessary facts, so rapidly did I tell the gist of my story.
"You will answer for this, sir," says Captain Kirkby. "With all my heart," I said. "Mr. Venables will meet Mr. Cludde's man and make the arrangements." And with that I went from the house. I ever regarded dueling as a barbarous and foolish way of settling a quarrel. If men must fight, let them use their fists, and so be quit of it for a bloody nose and a few bruises.
He proved an apt pupil, and I a conscientious teacher, pleasing myself with the thought that by making him expert in boxing I was maybe gathering interest on Dick Cludde's crown piece.
I heard them come in my direction, and guessed by their silence that they were looking warily around for the owner of the coat. But they did not see me, being completely covered by the hay; and, remarking that it looked a "rare good coat," one of them put his hand into all the pockets in turn, and from the inner one fetched out Cludde's crown piece. "A silver crown, Jo," he says.
At that moment I own I felt tempted to take Cludde's crown piece from the string whereon it hung about my neck, and return it to him; but as a second thought showed me that to do so would be in a manner to heap humiliation on a beaten enemy, I forbore, conscious at the same time of an inward assurance that I should yet find a fitting time for that act of restoration.
My lawyer in Bridgenorth was at first all for an accommodation, as he called it; he wanted me to make terms with that rogue Cludde, and a host of letters passed between him and Moggridge, who is Cludde's attorney. But that failed; of course it did, since I wouldn't give way, and now my man has filed a bill in chancery to make Lucy a ward of court, with me as her guardian.
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