Instantaneously he wheeled on the very foot whence he was taking the next stride, and as he turned his rapier gleamed in the moonlight.

The same moment it left his hand, he scarce knew how, and flew across the hedge.

Richard, who was unarmed, had seized the blade, and, almost by one and the same movement of his wrist, wrenched the hilt from the grasp of his adversary, and flung the thing from him.

Then closing with the cavalier, slighter and less skilled in such encounters, the roundhead almost instantly threw him upon the turf that bordered the road.
'Take that for drawing on an unarmed man,' he said.
No reply came.

The youth lay stunned.
Then compassion woke in the heart of the angry Richard, and he hastened to his help.