ce of thunder, "we will fight here and _He_
shall look on at it."

Turnbull glanced at the crucifix with a sort of scowling good-humour and
then said: "He may look and see His cross defeated."

"The cross cannot be defeated," said MacIan, "for it is Defeat."

A second afterwards the two bright, blood-thirsty weapons made the sign
of the cross in horrible parody upon each other.

They had not touched each other twice, however, when upon the hill,
above the crucifix, there appeared another horrible parody of its shape;
the figure of a man who appeared for an instant waving his outspread
arms. He had vanished in an instant; but MacIan, whose fighting face was
set that way, had seen the shape momentarily but quite photographically.
And while it was like a comic repetition of the cross, it was also,
in that place and hour, something more incredible. It had been only
instantaneously on the retina of his eye; but unless his eye and mind
were going mad together, the figure was that of an ordinary London
policeman.

He tried to concentrate his senses on the sword-play; but one half of
his brain was wrestling with the puzzle; the apocalyptic and almost
seraphic apparition of a stout constable out of Clapham on top of a
dreary and deserted hill in France. He did not, however, have to puzzle
long. Before the duellists had exchanged half a dozen passes, the big,
blue policeman appeared once more on the top of the hill, a palpable
monstrosity in the eye of heaven. He was waving only one arm now and
seemed to be shouting directions. At the same moment a mass of blue
blocked the corner of the road behind the small, smart figure of
Turnbull, and a small company of policemen in the English uniform came
up at a kind of half-military double.

Turnbull saw the stare of consternation in his enemy's face and swung
round to share its cause. When he saw it, cool as he was, he staggered
back.

"What the devil are you doing here?" he called out in a high, shrill
voice of authority, like one who finds a tramp in his own larder.

"Well, sir," said the sergeant in command, with that sort of heavy
civility shown only to the evidently guilty, "seems to me we might ask
what are you doing here?"

"We are having an affair of honour," said Turnbull, as if it were
the most rational thing in the world. "If the French police like to
interfere, let them interfere. But why the blue blazes should you
interfere, you great blue blundering sausages?"