u
are afraid that he will kill me, and you will lose your money.'

Frison fell back at that almost as if I had struck him, and I turned
to my adversary, who had been awaiting my motions with impatience. God
knows he did look young as he stood with his head bare and his fair hair
drooping over his smooth woman's forehead--a mere lad fresh from the
college of Burgundy, if they have such a thing in England. I felt a
sudden chill as I looked at him: a qualm, a tremor, a presentiment. What
was it the little tailor had said? That I should--but there, he did not
know. What did he know of such things? If I let this pass I must kill a
man a day, or leave Paris and the eating-house, and starve.

'A thousand pardons,' I said gravely, as I drew and took my place. 'A
dun. I am sorry that the poor devil caught me so inopportunely. Now
however, I am at your service.'

He saluted and we crossed swords and began. But from the first I had
no doubt what the result would be. The slippery stones and fading
light gave him, it is true, some chance, some advantage, more than he
deserved; but I had no sooner felt his blade than I knew that he was no
swordsman. Possibly he had taken half-a-dozen lessons in rapier art,
and practised what he learned with an Englishman as heavy and awkward
as himself. But that was all. He made a few wild clumsy rushes, parrying
widely. When I had foiled these, the danger was over, and I held him at
my mercy.

I played with him a little while, watching the sweat gather on his brow
and the shadow of the church tower fall deeper and darker, like the
shadow of doom, on his face. Not out of cruelty--God knows I have never
erred in that direction!--but because, for the first time in my life,
I felt a strange reluctance to strike the blow. The curls clung to his
forehead; his breath came and went in gasps; I heard the men behind me
and one or two of them drop an oath; and then I slipped--slipped, and
was down in a moment on my right side, my elbow striking the pavement so
sharply that the arm grew numb to the wrist.

He held off. I heard a dozen voices cry, 'Now! now you have him!' But he
held off. He stood back and waited with his breast heaving and his point
lowered, until I had risen and stood again on my guard.

'Enough! enough!' a rough voice behind me cried. 'Don't hurt the man
after that.'

'On guard, sir!' I answered coldly--for he seemed to waver, and be in
doubt. 'It was an accident. It shall not avail y