Explore "The Tavern Knight" by Rafael Sabatini on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
He whom they called the Tavern Knight laughed an evil laugh - such a laugh as might fall from the lips of Satan in a sardonic moment.
He sat within the halo of yellow light shed by two tallow candles, whose sconces were two empty bottles, and contemptuously he eyed the youth in black, standing with white face and quivering lip in a corner of the mean chamber. Then he laughed again, and in a hoarse voice, sorely suggestive of the bottle, he broke into song. He lay back in his chair, his long, spare legs outstretched, his spurs jingling to the lilt of his ditty whose burden ran: On the lip so red of the wench that's sped / His passionate kiss burns, still-O! / For 'tis April time, and of love and wine / Youth's way is to take its fill-O! / Down, down, derry-do!