very act--'twas while Jennifer was clutching at her bridle rein
to stay her from riding fair between us--I felt the hot-wire prick of
the steel in my shoulder and knew that my enemy had run me through as I
stood.

Of what befell afterward I have but dim memories. There were more
hoof-tramplings, and then I felt the dewy turf under my hands and soft
fingers tremblingly busy at my neckerchief. Then I saw swimmingly, as
through a veil of mist, a woman's face just above my own, and it was
full of horror; and I heard my enemy say: "'Twas most unfortunate and I
do heartily regret it, Mr. Jennifer. I saw not why he had lowered his
point. Can I say more?"

How Richard Jennifer made answer to this lie I know not; nor do I know
aught else, save by hear-say, of any further happening in that grassy
glade beneath my father's oaks. For the big German blade was a shrewd
blood-letter, and I fell asleep what time my lady was trying to stanch
with her kerchief the ebbing tide of life.

IV

WHICH MAY BE PASSED OVER LIGHTLY

When I came back to some clearer sensing of things, I found myself abed
in a room which was strange and yet strangely familiar. Barring a great
oaken clothes-press in one corner, a raree-show of curious china on the
shelves where the books should have been, and the face of an armored
soldier staring down at me from its frame over the chimney piece, where
I should have looked to see my mother's portrait, the room was a
counterpart of my old bedchamber at Appleby Hundred. There was even a
faint odor of lavender in the bed-linen; and the sense of smell, which
hath ever a better memory than any other, carried me swiftly back to my
boyhood, and to the remembrance that my mother had always kept a spray
or two of that sweet herb in her linen closet.

At the bedside there was a claw-footed table, which also had the look of
an old friend; and on it a dainty porringer, filled with cuttings of
fragrant sweetbriar. This was some womanly conceit, I said to myself;
and then I laughed, though the laugh set a pair of wolf's jaws at work
on my shoulder. For you must know that I had lived the full half of King
David's span of three-score and ten years, and more, and what womanly
softness had fallen to my lot had been well got and paid for.

I closed my eyes the better to remember what had befallen, and when I
opened them again was fain to wonder if the moment of back-reaching
stood not for some longer time. In the deep