ssed aside the shell, rose, and entered
the lists. With one hand he seized the gravedigger of the ruff, and
hurled him apart from him of the velvet breeches; with the other he
presented a dagger with a jeweled haft at the breast of the ruffian with
the woman's mantle, while in tones that would have befitted Astrophel
plaining of his love to rocks, woods, and streams, he poured forth a
flood of wild, singular, and filthy oaths, such as would have disgraced
a camp follower. His interference was effectual. The combatants
fell apart and the clamor was stilled, whereupon the gentleman of
contrarieties at once resumed the gentle and indifferent melancholy of
manner and address.

"Let us off with the old love before we are on with the new, gentlemen,"
he said. "We'll bury the dead first, and choose his successor
afterward,--decently and in order, I trust, and with due submission to
the majority."

"I'll fight for my rights," growled Red Gil.

"And I for mine," cried the Spaniard.

"And each of us'll back his own man," muttered in an aside the
gravedigger with the broken head.

The one they called Paradise sighed. "It is a thousand pities that there
is not amongst us some one of merit so preeminent that faction should
hide its head before it. But to the work in hand, gentlemen."

They gathered closer around the yawning grave, and some began to lift
the corpse. As for me, I withdrew as noiselessly as an Indian from my
lair of grass, and, hidden by the heaped-up sand, made off across the
point and down the beach to where a light curl of smoke showed that
some one was mending the fire I had neglected. It was Sparrow, who
alternately threw on driftwood and seaweed and spoke to madam, who
sat at his feet in the blended warmth of fire and sunshine. Diccon was
roasting the remainder of the oysters he had gathered the night before,
and my lord stood and stared with a frowning face at the nine-mile
distant mainland. All turned their eyes upon me as I came up to the
fire.

"A little longer, Captain Percy, and we would have had out a search
warrant," began the minister cheerfully. "Have you been building a
bridge?"

"If I build one," I said, "it will be a perilous one enough. Have you
looked seaward?"

"We waked but a minute agone," he answered. As he spoke, he straightened
his great form and lifted his face from the fire to the blue sea.
Diccon, still on his knees at his task, looked too; and my lord, turning
from his contem