sting."

"True, and it's all in knowing the secret. Well, I'm going to enlighten
you."

"Oh! I don't want to force you."

"You're too polite to do that; still, you must admit you would be glad
to have your mind set at rest about me."

"Because I'm interested in you."

"Well, Sir John, I am going to tell you the secret of the enigma,
something I have never done with any one before. For all my seeming good
health, I am suffering from a horrible aneurism that causes me spasms of
weakness and faintness so frequent as to shame even a woman. I spend
my life taking the most ridiculous precautions, and yet Larrey warns me
that I am liable to die any moment, as the diseased artery in my breast
may burst at the least exertion. Judge for yourself how pleasant for
a soldier! You can understand that, once I understood my condition, I
determined incontinently to die with all the glory possible. Another
more fortunate than I would have succeeded a hundred times already.
But I'm bewitched; I am impervious alike to bullets and balls; even the
swords seem to fear to shatter themselves upon my skin. Yet I never miss
an opportunity; that you must see, after what occurred at dinner. Well,
we are going to fight. I'll expose myself like a maniac, giving my
adversary all the advantages, but it will avail me nothing. Though
he shoot at fifteen paces, or even ten or five, at his very pistol's
point, he will miss me, or his pistol will miss fire. And all this
wonderful luck that some fine day when I least expect it, I may die
pulling on my boots! But hush I here comes my adversary."

As he spoke the upper half of three people could be seen ascending the
same rough and rocky path that Roland and Sir John had followed, growing
larger as they approached. Roland counted them.

"Three!" he exclaimed. "Why three, when we are only two?"

"Ah! I had forgotten," replied the Englishman. "M. de Barjols, as much
in your interest as in his own, asked permission to bring a surgeon, one
of his friends."

"What for?" harshly demanded Roland, frowning.

"Why, in case either one of you was wounded. A man's life can often be
saved by bleeding him promptly."

"Sir John," exclaimed Roland, ferociously, "I don't understand these
delicacies in the matter of a duel. When men fight they fight to kill.
That they exchange all sorts of courtesies beforehand, as your ancestors
did at Fontenoy, is all right; but, once the swords are unsheathed or
the pistols loa