For as you watched it, it changed like an April day from cloud to fair, from thunder to lightning, from night to day; yet whatever came or went, the look of a gentle man remained.
Man, did I say?
He was scarcely my senior, even if he was my equal in years; and his beardless chin and the boyish glow on his cheek made him seem younger than he was.
But why all this picture-drawing of a stray Oxford student, whom, while I talk about him, I keep standing in front of me on the floor of that poor kitchen?
You shall hear.
It was not to do me obeisance that he rose as I entered.

His dirk was drawn and his face was thunderous as he took a step forward and spoke.
"I want you not! So leave me." My Lord Burleigh himself could not have spoken the words more royally, although he would have spoken them with less music and more of an English accent in his voice.
Now, moved as I was by the look of my companion, it offended me to hear a loyal London 'prentice talked to thus like a dog, or, worse, like the drawer of the inn.
"By your leave," said I, and it was not often I said as much to any man, "unless you be the landlord of the place, I have as good a right to be here as you." "Then," said he, solemnly and, as I thought, sadly, "guard yourself." I whipped out my sword.

In my boastfulness, I thought I had too great an advantage with my long weapon against his short and not too highly- tempered blade, and I resolved with myself not to run him through if I could otherwise satisfy him.

But my tune changed as soon as we closed.
I could do nothing.

My fine thrusts and parries wherewith I was wont to set Finsbury Fields a-gaping all went for nothing.