calls me `grand
garcon' and dear pupil. Ah, he's a wonder. Only he makes me feel so
stupid. He's like one of those magician fellows when you cross swords
with him. Yes, it's just like magic; for when he likes he can make his
long thin blade twist and twine about yours as if it were a snake and
all alive; and before you know where you are it tightens round, and then
_twit, twang_, yours is snatched out of your hand and gone flying across
the room, making you feel as helpless as a child. Ah, you don't know
what it is to feel like that. I say, hold still. How am I to wipe you?
That's better."

"But I do know what it is to feel like that," cried Denis, as soon as he
could get his face free from the white linen cloth his new friend was
handling with great dexterity.

"You do?" cried the latter. "What, have you got a _maitre d'armes_ over
where you came from?"

"Yes, and he's here in this house now. You should have seen him in a
desperate fight we had last night against about a score--"

"Of the road outlaws coming through the forest?"

"Yes, and they attacked us."

"And you got away."

Denis nodded.

"My word! You were lucky!"

"It was through my fencing master," said Denis warmly, as his dressing
was hurried on. "He can do all you say when he's teaching; and when he
fights as he did last night--"

"Oh, I do wish that I had been there!"

"--his point seems everywhere at once."

"That's the sort of man I love," cried the English lad excitedly, and he
gave his visitor so hearty a slap on the shoulder that Denis changed
colour and reeled.

"Oh, what have I done!" cried the lad, catching him in his arms and
hurriedly lowering him into a settee, before fetching him water in a
silver cup and holding it to his lips.--"Feel better now?" he said.

"Oh yes, it's nothing. Don't laugh at me, please. I turned faint like
a great silly girl. You touched the tenderest place, where my arm was
hurt, and--"

"Denis, boy! May I come in?"

"Yes, yes," said the lad faintly. "Come in. Carrbroke, this is Master
Leoni, the gentleman who handles his sword so well."

"I am glad to know you, sir," said the youth, drawing himself up and
welcoming with courtly grace the slight, keen-looking, elderly man whose
strange, penetrating eyes seemed to be searching him through and
through. "I am so sorry that I was asleep when you came last night. I
was helping my father's visitor just now, and I am afraid I have hurt