ke glass in hands that aren't accustomed to them. It takes a bit of
practice, you see."

The note of condescension stung Boone painfully and his eyes narrowed.
"All right. Hev hit yore own way," he replied curtly. "I thought ye
wanted some sward-practice."

With a sudden flash of memory there came back to Basil Prince's mind the
picture of Victor McCalloway's cabin and Dinwiddie's sword--and, with
the memory, an idea. "Morgan," he suavely suggested, "your challenge was
general, as I understood it, and I don't see how you can gracefully
decline. If a blade breaks, I'll see that it's replaced."

The young college man could hesitate no longer, though he felt that he
was being forced into a ludicrous position, as he bowed his unwilling
acquiescence.

But when the two adversaries took their places where the furniture had
been hastily cleared away, the men widened their eyes and bent forward
absorbed. The mountain lad had suddenly shed his grotesqueness. He
dropped his blade and lifted it in salute, not like a bumpkin but with
the finished grace of familiarity--the sweeping confidence of perfect
ease. As he stepped back, saying "On guard," his left hand came up at
balance and his poise was as light as though he had been reared in the
classroom of a fencing-school.

Morgan went into that contest with the disadvantage of utter
astonishment. He had received some expensive instruction and was on the
way toward becoming a skilled hand with the rapier, but the "tobacco
yap" had been schooled by one of the first swords of Europe.

At the first sharp ring of steel on steel one or two persons
materialized in the library door, and they were speedily augmented by
fresh arrivals, until the circle of bare-shouldered girls and attendant
cavaliers pressed close on the area of combat. Backward and forward,
warily circling with a delicate and musical clatter of engaging steel
between them, went the lad in broadcloth and the boy in homespun.

It was, at best, unequal, but Morgan gave the most that he had, and
against a lesser skill he would have acquitted himself with credit.

After a little there came a lunge, a hilt pressed to lower blade, a
swift twist of a wrist, and young Wallifarro's foil flew clear of his
hand and clattered to the floor. He had been cleanly disarmed.

Boone drew the mask from his tousled head and shuffled his feet. That
awkwardness which had been so absent from his moments of action
descended upon him afresh a