he very devil, ye would find it ruin to make the essay."

"Ye doom me," said Sir Daniel gloomily.

"I doom you not," returned Richard. "If it so please you to set your
valour against mine, come on; and though I fear it be disloyal to my
party, I will take the challenge openly and fully, fight you with mine
own single strength, and call for none to help me. So shall I avenge my
father, with a perfect conscience."

"Ay," said Sir Daniel, "y' have a long sword against my dagger."

"I rely upon Heaven only," answered Dick, casting his sword some way
behind him on the snow. "Now, if your ill-fate bids you, come; and,
under the pleasure of the Almighty, I make myself bold to feed your
bones to foxes."

"I did but try you, Dickon," returned the knight, with an uneasy
semblance of a laugh. "I would not spill your blood."

"Go, then, ere it be too late," replied Shelton. "In five minutes I will
call the post. I do perceive that I am too long-suffering. Had but our
places been reversed, I should have been bound hand and foot some
minutes past."

"Well, Dickon, I will go," replied Sir Daniel. "When we next meet, it
shall repent you that ye were so harsh."

And with these words, the knight turned and began to move off under the
trees. Dick watched him with strangely mingled feelings, as he went,
swiftly and warily, and ever and again turning a wicked eye upon the lad
who had spared him, and whom he still suspected.

There was upon one side of where he went a thicket strongly matted with
green ivy, and, even in its winter state, impervious to the eye. Herein,
all of a sudden, a bow sounded like a note of music. An arrow flew, and
with a great, choked cry of agony and anger, the Knight of Tunstall
threw up his hands and fell forward in the snow.

Dick bounded to his side and raised him. His face desperately worked;
his whole body was shaken by contorting spasms.

"Is the arrow black?" he gasped.

"It is black," replied Dick gravely.

And then, before he could add one word, a desperate seizure of pain
shook the wounded man from head to foot, so that his body leaped in
Dick's supporting arms, and with the extremity of that pang his spirit
fled in silence.

The young man laid him back gently on the snow and prayed for that
unprepared and guilty spirit, and as he prayed the sun came up at a
bound, and the robins began chirping in the ivy.

When he rose to his feet, he found another man upon his knees but a few
steps be