Draw your sword, count, and defend yourself; we are
discovered, and they are upon us!"
"We are upon them, you mean, and it is they who are discovered,"
said the count, doing as directed, and stepping boldly in. "A
pretty hornet's next is this we have lit upon, if ever there was
one."
Side by side with the count, with a dauntless step and eye, Sir
Norman entered, too; and, at sight of him a burst of surprise and
fury rang from lip to lip. There was a yell of "Betrayed,
betrayed!" and the dwarf, with a face so distorted by fiendish
fury that it was scarcely human, made a frenzied rush at him,
when the clear, commanding voice of the count rang like a bugle
blast through the assembly
"Sheathe your swords, the whole of you, and yield yourselves
prisoners. In the king's name, I command you to surrender."
"There is no king here but I!" screamed the dwarf, gnashing his
teeth, and fairly foaming with rage. "Die; traitor and spy! You
have escaped me once, but your hour is come now."
"Allow me to differ from you," said Sir Norman, politely, as he
evaded the blindly-frantic lunge of the dwarf's sword, and
inserted an inch or two of the point of his own in that enraged
little prince's anatomy.
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