“When and where you please, Sir Jocelyn,” the knight replied; but recollect the duello is forbidden, and, though I would not willingly disappoint you in your desire to cut my throat, I should be sorry to think you might be hanged for it afterwards.  Come, Sir Jocelyn, lay aside this idle passion, and look to your true interests, which lie not in quarrelling with me, but in our reconciliation.  I can help you effectually, as I have shown; and, as I am a true gentleman, I will help you.  Give me your hand, and let us be friends!”

“Never!” Jocelyn exclaimed, withdrawing from him, “never shall the hand of a Mounchensey grasp yours in friendship!  I would sooner mine rotted off!  I am your mortal foe.  My father’s death has to be avenged.”

“Provoke him not, my good young Sir,” interposed an elderly man, next him, in a long furred gown, with hanging sleeves, and a flat cap on his head, who had heard what was now passing.  “You know not the mischief he may do you.”

“I laugh at his malice, and defy him,” Jocelyn cried—­“he shall not sit one moment longer beside me.  Out, knave! out!” he added, seizing Sir Francis by the wing of his doublet, and forcibly thrusting him from his seat.  “You are not fit company for honest men.  Ho! varlets, to the door with him!  Throw him into the kennel.”

“You shall rue this, villain!—­you shall rue it bitterly,” Sir Francis cried, shaking his clenched hands at him.  “Your father perished like a dog in the Fleet, and you shall perish there likewise.  You have put yourself wholly in my power, and I will make a fearful example of you.  You have dared to utter scandalous and contemptuous language against the great and high court of Star-Chamber, before the decrees of which, all men bow; impugning its justice and denying its authority; and you shall feel the full weight of its displeasure.  I call upon these worthy gentlemen to testify against you.”

“We have heard nothing, and can testify nothing,” several voices cried.

“But you, Sir, who were next him, you must have heard him?” Sir Francis said, addressing the elderly man in the furred gown.

“Not I!” rejoined the person appealed to; “I gave no heed to what was said.”

“But I did, Sir Francis,” squeaked a little whey-faced man, in a large ruff and tight-laced yellow doublet, from the opposite side of the table; “I heard him most audaciously vilipend the high court of Star-Chamber and its councils; and I will bear testimony against him when called upon.”

“Your name, good Sir, your name?” Sir Francis demanded, taking out his tablets.

“Set me down as Thopas Trednock, tailor, at the sign of the Pressing Iron, in Cornhill,” the whey-faced man replied, in his shrill tones, amid the derisive laughter of the assemblage.

“Thopas Trednock, tailor—­good!” the knight repeated, as he wrote the name down.  “You will be an excellent witness, Master Trednock.  Fare you well for the present, Master Jocelyn Mounchensey, for I now mind well your father was degraded from the honour of knighthood.  As I am a true gentleman! you may be sure of committal to the Fleet.”