rown a little tired. His rush and
dash were less strong when he came at me, and I thought I caught in his
eye a new doubtfulness of success. He was famed for the quickness with
which he could finish a duel, and probably he had also decided to
settle this one at the third time of asking.

We parried and thrust, sword to sword, and I was driven to give way a
few paces by the Colonel's onslaught. This led him to take risks, as I
had hoped he might. Let him tire out his sword arm with heavy lunges
and elaborate recoveries, while I kept myself on guard, and then,
perhaps, my turn would come, for getting him. It did come, but it
came, as most things come, in an unexpected fashion.

Sweating like a man in a fever, with his eyes wild and savage, the
Black Colonel at last fairly flung himself on me. My face was also
streaming with perspiration, but my head remained cool, perhaps because
I felt that Marget was looking on. A warm heart and a cool head should
neighbour an ordeal, and, in that assailing of me, my maintenance of
this combination was everything.

As he leapt forward, purposing to overwhelm me, the Black Colonel's
foot appeared to catch an uprising tuft that had been left unnibbled by
the sheep, possibly on account of the coarse toughness of its grass.
He lost his balance and shot heavily at me, holding his sword straight
out, as if to drive it through me. Here was my chance, for he could
not, in this act of falling, change the position of his weapon. I did
that for him by a mere touch, and it ran by me, near, it is true, but
without hurting me. Mine, on the other hand, pierced the muscle of the
Black Colonel's right arm, and instantly his sword fell from his hand,
rattling close to my foot. The blood spurted from him to the cry of
the onlookers, "Ah, he's ill hit," for he looked it, lying there on the
ground with a long, red gash in his arm.

"No," he said, slowly rising, "I am not ill hurt, but I am hurt in a
measure which will keep me from fighting any more this afternoon. Here
I am with a useless right hand, and I have never learned to use the
left, so we must stop."

By this time Marget had come up, offering to bind the Black Colonel's
wounded arm, and staunch the bleeding, a task which Red Murdo had
already begun, only his hands were clumsy at it. Marget made him take
off the strip of tartan which he was twisting tightly round the forearm
and put her linen handkerchief nearest the wound. This t