med hat as
Rodriguez compelled him to sit down. He straightened out the hat as he
sat, and the hurt was shown to be of no great consequence.

"The blessed Saints be praised," Rodriguez said. "It need not stop our
encounter. But rest awhile, senor."

"Indeed, it is nothing," he answered.

"But the indignity is immeasurable," sighed Rodriguez. "Would you care,
senor, when you are well rested to give the chastisement yourself?"

"As far as that goes," said the stranger, "I can chastise him now."

"If you are fully recovered, senor," Rodriguez said, "my own sword is
at your disposal to beat him sore with the flat of it, or how you will.
Thus no dishonour shall touch your sword from the skin of so vile a
knave."

The stranger smiled: the idea appealed to him.

"You make a noble amend, senor," he said as he bowed over Rodriguez'
proffered sword.

Morano had not moved far, but stood near, wondering. "What should a
servant do if not work for his master?" he wondered. And how work for
him when dead? And dead, as it seemed to Morano, through his own fault
if he allowed any man to kill him when he perceived him about to do so.
He stood there puzzled. And suddenly he saw the stranger coming angrily
towards him in the clear moonlight with a sword. Morano was frightened.

As the hidalgo came up to him he stretched out his left hand to seize
Morano by the shoulder. Up went the frying-pan, the stranger parried,
but against a stroke that no school taught or knew, and for the second
time he went down in the dust with a reeling head. Rodriguez turned
toward Morano and said to him ... No, realism is all very well, and I
know that my duty as author is to tell all that happened, and I could
win mighty praise as a bold, unconventional writer; at the same time,
some young lady will be reading all this next year in some far country,
or in twenty years in England, and I would sooner she should not read
what Rodriguez said. I do not, I trust, disappoint her. But the gist of
it was that he should leave that place now and depart from his service
for ever. And hearing those words Morano turned mournfully away and was
at once lost in the darkness. While Rodriguez ran once more to help his
fallen antagonist. "Senor, senor," he said with an emotion that some
wearing centuries and a cold climate have taught us not to show, and
beyond those words he could find no more to say.

"Giddy, only giddy," said the stranger.

A tear fell on his foreh