y looked with straining eyes and did not feel sure of the result even
with their captain as their champion.

"Come on, sir, and take your punishment, you cowardly leader of
cowards!" exclaimed Coleman in a most exasperating tone. "Don't stand
there dreading it. Pluck up a little nerve and come on!"

It is useless to say that Judge Favart de Caumartin needed no bullying
of this sort to urge him into combat. With beautiful swiftness and grace
he sprang forward and at once took the offensive. Then followed sword
play that was amazing to look at. Each combatant showed that mastery of
the fencing art which makes the weapon appear to be a part of the man.
So swiftly leaped the shining shafts of steel that the eye saw only fine
symmetrical figures shimmering between the fighters, while spangles of
fire leaped from the crossing edges. Coleman felt at once that he had
met his match; the Judge tingled with the discovery that here at last
was a master.

From the first it was a fight to the death if possible. Neither could
hope to disarm the other, nor was there probability of any mere
disablement ending the contest. The watchers, looking on in breathless
suspense, heard with intensely straining ears the almost magically rapid
clinking of the blades.

Coleman fought as if with the energy of all the accumulated romance of
his recent experiences, half recognizing, as he parried and thrust and
feinted and recovered guard, the vivid picturesqueness, the melodramatic
unreality, and yet the deadly intensity of the situation. He did not
know where he was or why he had been brought there. The whole affair had
mystery enough in it to have destroyed the will power of any weaker man;
but to him, while the strangeness affected his imagination, there was
nothing in the matter to make him falter or to weaken the force of his
arm. A fine glow of enthusiasm flashed indeed into his blood, and with
it an access of cunning grace and swift certainty of hand and eye. The
feeling prevailed that he had in some strange way stepped out of the
real world into the world of romance, and as he fought, the charm of
heroism fell upon him, and, like the knights of old, he felt the
strength of a glorious desperation. All round him the vague spirit of
dreamland seemed to hover, though the hideous pictures of skeletons and
cadavers gleamed real enough in the glare of the chandeliers. What
inspired him most, however, was the knowledge that he was trying his
force