"You will make a
notable swordsman one of these days. Now I shall leave you here for
an hour with worthy Captain Raikes, and he will give you a lesson
in fencing which you will not fail to profit by. After that I will
come back for you, and take you elsewhere.
"Captain Raikes, I have a little affair on hand tomorrow morning. I
would fain try a pass with you, to see that my hand has lost
nothing of its cunning."
"Not much fear of that, my lord," answered the master of the place,
as he took the rapier from Tom; and the next minute the youth from
the country stood in silent admiration and amaze, whilst the two
blades crossed and flashed, and twined and clashed, with a
precision and masterly deftness which aroused his keen delight and
envy. To become a proficient like that would be something worth
living for; and his quick eyes studied the movements and methods of
the two adversaries, till he felt he had begun to have some little
notion of the tricks by which such results were attained.
When Lord Claud came back to fetch him, at the end of the
stipulated hour, it was to find young Tom without coat, vest, or
peruke, and bathed in perspiration; but so keenly interested in the
new science, that it was all his comrade could do to drag him away.
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