the
afternoon when he had done, and then he bade Paul take the case of
pistols, slip quietly into the street, and walk straight on till he
was overtaken. He obeyed, not without suspicion, and when he reached
the city limits found the agent, to his great surprise, seated in a
carriage. Two other persons attended him, and one, who was bald and
wore glasses, had a case of surgical instruments lying at his feet.
Paul climbed to the driver's box, and they dashed along by the
water-side, meeting a second carriage on their way. The last rays of
sunset were streaming over the low landscape when both carriages
stopped, their occupants dismounted, and Wait came to the front and
reached up his hand to Paul.

"Good-by, boy," he said in a tone of unwonted tenderness; "remain here
a moment and you will see me again!"

They filed along a dyke separating two swamps, and turning down to the
beach, were hidden behind a line of cypress trees. For a few moments
Paul only heard the roar of the surf, the noise of the distant town,
and the short breathing of the sedate negro beside him. Then there
were shouts, as of a person counting rapidly, and two reports so close
that one seemed the echo of the other. A few minutes afterward the
agent appeared, leaning upon the arms of his attendants. He was
divested of coat and vest, and as he came nearer, bareheaded, Paul saw
that his face was colorless and working as from deadly pain. His shirt
was perforated close to the collar, and the blood flowing beneath had
stained it to his waist, and dripped in a runnel from his boots. He
fainted when he had taken his seat; and as the carriage rolled away,
Paul looked back toward the duelling-ground, and beheld two men
bearing upon their shoulders a stiff, straight burden, wrapped in a
cloak.

The second carriage passed him, driven swiftly, and it seemed to emit
a chill draught upon Paul like the damp wind from a tomb; it was the
presence of death, at whose very mention we grow cold.

Wait had vindicated his courage, but at the expense of his life. He
lingered on in agony many days; and Paul so pitied him that he stole
into his darkened chamber and begged to do him kindnesses. The grim
man lay implacable, waiting for death; but one night as he writhed
with the dew upon his forehead, Paul heard him mutter, "My God! my
mother!"

The boy remembered a quaint text of Scripture: "Save me, O God! for
the waters have come in unto my soul;" and he repeated it in