laughed grimly.

'I have not made up my mind,' I answered irresolutely.

'Well, NOM DE DIEU! make it up,' the Captain replied, with an ugly
sneer. He took a swaggering step this way and that, playing his weapon.
'I am afraid, Lieutenant, that there will be no sport to-day,' he
continued in a loud aside. 'Our cock has but a chicken heart.'

'Well, I said coolly,'I do not know what to do. Certainly it is a fine
day, and a fair piece of ground. And the sun stands well. But I have not
much to gain by killing you, M. le Capitaine, and it might get me into
an awkward fix. On the other hand, it would not hurt me to let you go.'

'Indeed!' he said contemptuously, looking at me as I should look at a
lackey.

'No!' I replied. 'For if you were to say that you had struck Gil de
Berault and left the ground with a whole skin, no one would believe
you.'

'Gil de Berault!' he exclaimed frowning.

'Yes, Monsieur,' I replied suavely. 'At your service. You did not know
my name?'

'I thought that your name was De Barthe,' he said. His voice sounded
queerly; and he waited for the answer with parted lips, and a shadow in
his eyes which I had seen in men's eyes before.

'No,' I said; 'that was my mother's name. I took it for this occasion
only.'

His florid cheek lost a shade of its colour, and he bit his lips as he
glanced at the Lieutenant, trouble in his eyes. I had seen these signs
before, and knew them, and I might have cried 'Chicken-heart!' in my
turn; but I had not made a way of escape for him--before I declared
myself--for nothing, and I held to my purpose.

'I think you will allow now,' I said grimly, 'that it will not harm me
even if I put up with a blow!'

'M. de Berault's courage is known,' he muttered.

'And with reason,' I said. 'That being so suppose that we say this
day three months, M. le Capitaine? The postponement to be for my
convenience.'

He caught the Lieutenant's eye and looked down sullenly, the conflict in
his mind as plain as daylight. He had only to insist that I must fight;
and if by luck or skill he could master me his fame as a duellist would
run, like a ripple over water, through every garrison town in France and
make him a name even in Paris. On the other side were the imminent peril
of death, the gleam of cold steel already in fancy at his breast, the
loss of life and sunshine, and the possibility of a retreat with honour,
if without glory. I read his face, and knew before he spoke what he