fathoms deep in the
present business, held in a web made by many lines of force, both
thick and thin, refolded the paper and made to put it into his
pocketbook, then bethinking himself, tore it instead into small pieces
and, rising, dropped these into a brazier where burned a little
charcoal. He would carry nothing with his proper name upon it. Coming
back to the chair in the sunshine, he sat for a moment with his eyes
upon a gray huddle of roofs visible through the window. Then he broke
the seal and unfolded the letter superscribed in Alexander's strong
writing.

There were hardly six lines. And they did not tell of how discovery
had been made, nor why, nor when. They said nothing of death nor
life--no word of the Kelpie's Pool. They carried, tersely, a direct
challenge, the ground Ian Rullock's conception of friendship, a
conception tallying nicely with Alexander Jardine's idea of a mortal
enmity. Such a fishing-town, known of both, back of such a sea beach
in Holland--such a tavern in this place. Meet there--wait there, the
one who should reach it first for the other, and--to give all possible
ground to delays of letters, travel, arrangements generally--in so
late a month as April. "Find me there, or await me there, my one-time
friend, henceforth my foe! I--or Justice herself above me--would teach
you certain things!"

The cartel bore date the 1st of January--later by a month than the
Black Hill letter. It dropped from Ian's hand; he sat with blankness
of mind in the sunlight. Presently he shivered slightly. He leaned
his elbows on his knees and his forehead in his hands and sat still.
Alexander! He felt no hot straining toward meeting, toward fighting,
Alexander. Perversely enough, after a year of impatient, contemptuous
thought in that direction, he had lately felt liking and an ancient
strong respect returning like a tide that was due. And he could not
meet Alexander in April--that was impossible! No private affair could
be attended to now.

... Elspeth, of whom the letter carried no word, Elspeth from whom he
had not heard since in August he left that countryside, Elspeth who
had agreed with him that love of man and woman was nobody's business
but their own, Elspeth who, when he would go, had let him go with a
fine pale refusal to deal in women's tears and talk of injury, who had
said, indeed, that she did not repent, much bliss being worth some
bale--Elspeth whom he could not be sure that he would see again