each other, and whatever interest in the proceedings might be theirs
they were careful to conceal it from Sheldon. He ordered them to
continue hoeing weeds in a distant and out-of-the-way corner, and went on
with the pursuit of Tudor.

Tiring of the endless circling, Sheldon tried once more to advance
directly on his foe, but the latter was too crafty, taking advantage of
his boldness to fire a couple of shots at him, and slipping away on some
changed and continually changing course. For an hour they dodged and
turned and twisted back and forth and around, and hunted each other among
the orderly palms. They caught fleeting glimpses of each other and
chanced flying shots which were without result. On a grassy shelter
behind a tree, Sheldon came upon where Tudor had rested and smoked a
cigarette. The pressed grass showed where he had sat. To one side lay
the cigarette stump and the charred match which had lighted it. In front
lay a scattering of bright metallic fragments. Sheldon recognized their
significance. Tudor was notching his steel-jacketed bullets, or cutting
them blunt, so that they would spread on striking--in short, he was
making them into the vicious dum-dum prohibited in modern warfare.
Sheldon knew now what would happen to him if a bullet struck his body. It
would leave a tiny hole where it entered, but the hole where it emerged
would be the size of a saucer.

He decided to give up the pursuit, and lay down in the grass, protected
right and left by the row of palms, with on either hand the long avenue
extending. This he could watch. Tudor would have to come to him or else
there would be no termination of the affair. He wiped the sweat from his
face and tied the handkerchief around his neck to keep off the stinging
gnats that lurked in the grass. Never had he felt so great a disgust for
the thing called "adventure." Joan had been bad enough, with her Baden-
Powell and long-barrelled Colt's; but here was this newcomer also looking
for adventure, and finding it in no other way than by lugging a peace-
loving planter into an absurd and preposterous bush-whacking duel. If
ever adventure was well damned, it was by Sheldon, sweating in the
windless grass and fighting gnats, the while he kept close watch up and
down the avenue.

Then Tudor came. Sheldon happened to be looking in his direction at the
moment he came into view, peering quickly up and down the avenue before
he stepped into the open.