. He was sinewy and active, and perchance he might yet make
Galliard repent that he had discarded his rapier. The knight's reason
for doing so he thought he had in Crispin's contemptuous words:

"Good steel were too great an honour for you, Mr. Ashburn."

And as he spoke, his lean, nervous fingers tightened about Joseph's
throat in a grip that crushed the breath from him, and with it the
new-born hope of proving master in his fresh combat. He had not reckoned
with this galley-weaned strength of Crispin's, a strength that was a
revelation to Joseph as he felt himself almost lifted from the ground,
and swung this way and that, like a babe in the hands of a grown man.
Vain were his struggles. His strength ebbed fast; the blood, held
overlong in his head, was already obscuring his vision, when at last the
grip relaxed, and his breathing was freed. As his sight cleared again
he found himself back in his chair at the table-head, and beside him Sir
Crispin, his left hand resting upon the board, his right grasping once
more the sword, and his eyes bent mockingly and evilly upon his victim.

Kenneth, looking on, could not repress a shudder. He had known Crispin
for a tempestuous man quickly moved to wrath, and he had oftentimes seen
anger make terrible his face and glance. But never had he seen aught
in him to rival this present frenzy; it rendered satanical the baleful
glance of his eyes and the awful smile of hate and mockery with which he
gazed at last upon the helpless quarry that he had waited eighteen
years to bring to earth. "I would," said Crispin, in a harsh, deliberate
voice, "that you had a score of lives, Master Joseph. As it is I have
done what I could. Two agonies have you undergone already, and I am
inclined to mercy. The end is at hand. If you have prayers to say, say
them, Master Ashburn, though I doubt me it will be wasted breath--you
are over-ripe for hell."

"You mean to kill me," he gasped, growing yet a shade more livid.

"Does the suspicion of it but occur to you?" laughed Crispin, "and yet
twice already have I given you a foretaste of death. Think you I but
jested?"

Joseph's teeth clicked together in a snap of determination. That sneer
of Crispin's acted upon him as a blow--but as a blow that arouses the
desire to retaliate rather than lays low. He braced himself for fresh
resistance; not of action, for that he realized was futile, but of
argument.

"It is murder that you do," he cried.

"No; it