action is worthy of your fame and blood.
Permit me to consult for a moment with the gentlemen in whose hands I
shall place myself."

In three long strides he rejoined his companions, and they, who had seen
his champagne-inspired attack and listened to his idiotic explanations,
were quite startled at the look of him. For now that he came back to
them he was quite sober, a little pale, and he spoke in a low voice of
passionate practicality.

"I have done it," he said hoarsely. "I have fixed a fight on the beast.
But look here, and listen carefully. There is no time for talk. You are
my seconds, and everything must come from you. Now you must insist, and
insist absolutely, on the duel coming off after seven tomorrow, so as to
give me the chance of preventing him from catching the 7.45 for Paris.
If he misses that he misses his crime. He can't refuse to meet you on
such a small point of time and place. But this is what he will do. He
will choose a field somewhere near a wayside station, where he can pick
up the train. He is a very good swordsman, and he will trust to killing
me in time to catch it. But I can fence well too, and I think I can keep
him in play, at any rate, until the train is lost. Then perhaps he may
kill me to console his feelings. You understand? Very well then, let
me introduce you to some charming friends of mine," and leading them
quickly across the parade, he presented them to the Marquis's seconds by
two very aristocratic names of which they had not previously heard.

Syme was subject to spasms of singular common sense, not otherwise a
part of his character. They were (as he said of his impulse about the
spectacles) poetic intuitions, and they sometimes rose to the exaltation
of prophecy.

He had correctly calculated in this case the policy of his opponent.
When the Marquis was informed by his seconds that Syme could only
fight in the morning, he must fully have realised that an obstacle
had suddenly arisen between him and his bomb-throwing business in the
capital. Naturally he could not explain this objection to his friends,
so he chose the course which Syme had predicted. He induced his seconds
to settle on a small meadow not far from the railway, and he trusted to
the fatality of the first engagement.

When he came down very coolly to the field of honour, no one could have
guessed that he had any anxiety about a journey; his hands were in his
pockets, his straw hat on the back of his head, his