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Then Hereward went off to Holland, and there he encountered Dirk Hammerhand, from whom to take a buffet was never to need another, and bought from him his famous mare Swallow, the price agreed on being the half of what Hereward had offered and a box on the ear. "Villain!" groaned Dirk as he lay on the ground. "It was I who was to give the buffet, not thou!"

Hereward answered, in his boasting vein, that he would bring home that mare, or aught else that he had a liking to. "You will find it not so easy. Her owner, they say, is a mighty strong churl of a horse-breeder, Dirk Hammerhand by name; and as for cutting his throat, that you must not do; for he has been loyal to Countess Gertrude, and sent her horses whenever she needed."

"Art mad?" asked the stranger, as he coolly picked up the coins, which Dirk had scattered in his fall. "It is the seller's business to take, and the buyer's to give." And while Dirk roared for help in vain he leapt on mare Swallow and rode off shouting, "Aha! Dirk Hammerhand! So you thought to knock a hole in my skull, as you have done to many a better man than yourself.

He saw Ivo Taillebois; he saw Oger; he saw his fellow-Breton, Sir Raoul de Dol; he saw Sir Ascelin; he saw Sir Aswa, Thorold's man; he saw Sir Hugh of Evermue, his own son-in-law; and with them he saw, or seemed to see, the Ogre of Cornwall, and O'Brodar of Ivark, and Dirk Hammerhand of Walcheren, and many another old foe long underground; and in his ear rang the text, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

Drunk I was last night: but not so drunk as to forget a promise." And he rode on, while Torfrida rushed away and broke into wild weeping. On a bench at the door of his high-roofed wooden house sat Dirk Hammerhand, the richest man in Walcheren.

"There," quoth the stranger, counting out the money carefully, "is thy coin. And there is thy box on the ear." And with a blow which rattled over the fen, he felled Dirk Hammerhand to the ground. He lay senseless for a moment, and then looked wildly round. His jaw was broken. "Villain!" groaned he. "It was I who was to give the buffet, not thou!"

What if he got the money, brained or at least disabled the stranger, and so had a chance of selling the mare a second time to some fresh comer? "Thou art a strange fellow," quoth the horse-dealer. "But so be it." Dirk chuckled. "He does not know," thought he, "that he has to do with Dirk Hammerhand," and he clenched his fist in anticipation of his rough joke.