old highland broadsword and the feel of it was not
unpleasant. It lent a fresh flow to my blood. I tore the sword from
its fastenings, and, in a second, I was standing facing my brother on a
more equal, on a more satisfactory footing, determined to defend
myself, blow for blow, against his inhuman, insane conduct.

"Ho! ho!" he yelled. "A duel in the twentieth century. 'Gad! wouldn't
this set London by the ears? The Corsican Brothers over again!

"Come on, with your battle-axe, farmer Giles, Let's see what stuff
you're made of--blood or sawdust."

Twice he thrust at me and twice I barely avoided his dextrous
onslaughts. I parried as he thrust, not daring to venture a return.
Our strange weapons rang out and re-echoed, time and again, in the
dread stillness of the isolated armoury.

My left arm was smarting from the first wound I had received, and a few
drops of blood trickled down over the back of my hand, splashing on the
floor.

"You bleed!--just like a human being, George. Who would have thought
it?" gloated Harry with a taunt.

He came at me again.

My broadsword was heavy and, to me, unwieldy, while Harry's rapier was
light and pliable. I could tell that there could be only one ending,
if the unequal contest were prolonged,--I would be wounded badly, or
killed outright. At that moment, I had no very special desire for
either happening.

Harry turned and twisted his weapon with the clever wrist movement for
which he was famous in every fencing club in Britain; and every time I
wielded my heavy weapon to meet his light one I thought I should never
be in time to meet his counter-stroke, his recovery was so very much
quicker than mine.

He played with me thus for a time which seemed an eternity. My breath
began to come in great gasps. Suddenly he lunged at me with all his
strength, throwing the full weight of his body recklessly behind his
stroke, so sure was he, evidently, that it would find its mark. I
sprang aside just in time, bringing my broadsword down on his rapier
and sending six inches of the point of it clattering to the floor.

"Damn the thing!" he blustered, taking a firmer grip of what steel
remained in his hand.

"Aren't you satisfied? Won't you stop this madness?" I panted, my
voice sounding loud and hollow in the stillness around us.

For answer he grazed my cheek with his jagged steel, letting a little
more blood and hurting sufficiently to cause me to wince.

"Got you aga