lmost fear myself.

"Ensie dear," I said quite gently, grieving that he should see his
wicked father killed, "run up yonder round the corner, and try to find
a pretty bunch of bluebells for the lady." The child obeyed me, hanging
back, and looking back, and then laughing, while I prepared for
business. There and then I might have killed mine enemy with a single
blow while he lay unconscious, but it would have been foul play.

With a sullen and black scowl, the Carver gathered his mighty limbs and
arose, and looked round for his weapons; but I had put them well away.
Then he came to me and gazed, being wont to frighten thus young men.

"I would not harm you, lad," he said, with a lofty style of sneering: "I
have punished you enough for most of your impertinence. For the rest I
forgive you, because you have been good and gracious to my little son.
Go and be contented."

For answer I smote him on the cheek, lightly, and not to hurt him, but
to make his blood leap up. I would not sully my tongue by speaking to a
man like this.

There was a level space of sward between us and the slough. With the
courtesy derived from London, and the procession I had seen, to this
place I led him. And that he might breathe himself, and have every fibre
cool, and every muscle ready, my hold upon his coat I loosed, and left
him to begin with me whenever he thought proper.

I think he felt that his time was come. I think he knew from my knitted
muscles, and the firm arch of my breast, and the way in which I stood,
but most of all from my stern blue eyes, that he had found his master.
At any rate, a paleness came, an ashy paleness on his cheeks, and the
vast calves of his legs bowed in, as if he were out of training.

Seeing this, villain as he was, I offered him first chance. I stretched
forth my left hand as I do to a weaker antagonist, and I let him have
the hug of me. But in this I was too generous; having forgotten my
pistol-wound, and the cracking of one of my short lower ribs. Carver
Doone caught me round the waist with such a grip as never yet had been
laid upon me.

I heard my rib go; I grasped his arm and tore the muscle out of it[2]
(as the string comes out of an orange); then I took him by the throat,
which is not allowed in wrestling, but he had snatched at mine; and now
was no time of dalliance. In vain he tugged and strained and writhed,
dashed his bleeding fist into my face, and flung himself on me with
gnashing jaws. Be