en club members, the struggling madman still foamed to get at
his rival's throat--that rival whose disdainful eyes seemed to count him
but a mad dog impotent to bite.

"You would not drink with me; you would not play with me; but, by God, you
will have to fight with me," he cried at last.

"When you please."

"Always I have hated you, wanted always to kill you, now I shall do it,"
he screamed.

Volney turned on his heel and beckoned to Beauclerc.

"Will you act for me, Topham?" he asked; and when the other assented,
added: "Arrange the affair to come off as soon as possible. I want to have
done with the thing at once."

They fought within the hour in the Field of the Forty Footsteps. The one
was like fire, the other ice. They were both fine swordsmen, but there was
no man in England could stand against Volney at his best, and those who
were present have put it on record that Sir Robert's skill was this day at
high water mark. He fought quite without passion, watching with cool
alertness for his chance to kill. His opponent's breath came short, his
thrusts grew wild, the mad rage of the man began to give way to a no less
mad despair. Every feint he found anticipated, every stroke parried; and
still his enemy held to the defensive with a deadly cold watchfulness that
struck chill to the heart of the fearful bully. We are to conceive that
Craven tasted the bitterness of death, that in the cold passionless face
opposite to him he read his doom, and that in the horrible agony of terror
that sweated him he forgot the traditions of his class and the training of
a lifetime. He stumbled, and when Sir Robert held his hand, waiting point
groundward with splendid carelessness for his opponent to rise, Craven
flung himself forward on his knees and thrust low at him. The blade went
home through the lower vitals.

Volney stood looking at him a moment with a face of infinite contempt,
than sank back into the arms of Beauclerc.

While the surgeon was examining the wound Craven stole forward guiltily to
the outskirts of the little group which surrounded the wounded man. His
horror-stricken eyes peered out of a face like chalk. The man's own second
had just turned his back on him, and he was already realizing that the
foul stroke had written on his forehead the brand of Cain, had made him an
outcast and a pariah on the face of the earth.

The eyes of Volney and his murderer met, those of the dying man full of
scorn. Craven's gla