He felt certain he could hold his own against one or two, and a whole band would never take him unawares.

He should hear or see them in plenty of time to hide away in some tree or thicket.

It was absurd to be chained within doors any longer.
Paul was looking now a very different object from the battered and way-worn traveller who had rescued Joan from the robbers.

A couple of weeks' rest and good feeding had given a healthy glow to his cheek, had brightened his eye, and brought back the native boyishness and brightness to his face.

He was stronger, gayer, blither than he had been since the never-to-be-forgotten day when he had closed his dead mother's eyes, and been obliged to fly for his life from his ancestral halls, ere the rapacious scions of the House of York fell upon him there, to take into their own possession all that should have been his.