intent on bringing back the body of their chief, that it might lie at
rest in the grave where sleep the fathers of that noble race.

There, in London, Frank narrowly escaped being taken. As it chanced, at
that time an Italian bravo was earning for himself an unsavoury
notoriety by going about boastfully challenging all England to stand up
before him to prove who was the better man. He would mark his man, pick
a quarrel with him, and the result was always the same. The Italian's
trick of fence was deadly, his wrist a wrist of steel. None yet had been
able to stand long before him; not one had got inside his guard.

As he walked once near Leicester Field in the dusk of an evening,
Stokoe's great figure caught the eye of this little Italian, in whose
mind suddenly arose the irresistible longing to bring this huge bulk
toppling to earth. That would be something not unworth boasting
about--that he, a sort of eighteenth-century David, should slay this
modern Goliath.

No one had ever been able to complain that it was difficult to pick a
quarrel with Frank Stokoe. Not that he was quarrelsome--far otherwise;
but never was he known to shrink from any combat that was pressed on
him, and on this occasion the venomous little foreigner found him most
ready to oblige. It wanted but a slight jostle, an Italian oath hissed
out, a few words in broken English to the effect that big men were
proverbially clumsy, and that bigness and courage were not always to be
found united. Stokoe knew very well who his assailant was, knew his
reputation, and the slender chance the ordinary swordsman might expect
to have against this foreigner's devilish skill, but his weapon was
unsheathed almost before the Italian had ceased to curse. Cautiously
keeping a check on his habitual impetuosity, calling to his aid every