"Swords."

Edmonson smiled derisively.

"You think my sword arm will not be strong enough?" he asked. "I
shouldn't advise you to depend upon that. Time--when I am able.
Place--we'll settle that afterward. We can't find seconds here--too much
Puritanism; they would interfere. But we can arrange it; we're honorable
men," he sneered. "I may depend upon you?"

"Yes."

"If not--beware! Now, surgeon, only one thing more," as Harwin left the
tent. "How much have I hurt Mistress Royal?"

"Lovell has gone with them. When he returns you shall hear."

"You will certainly tell me?"

"Certainly."

"Then I have done with you to-night." And he threw himself back on his
pillow, and lay silent and watchful until the other surgeon entered.
Hours after, he fell into an uneasy sleep.

Elizabeth's injury was slight. When she recovered from the shock and the
faintness, she declared that there was no wound at all--that the ball
had merely grazed her, and the report of the pistol and her fatigue had
done the rest.

"You always seem to be round sort of handy when we want anything,"
remarked Nancy to Archdale as she looked up from wiping the few drops of
blood from Elizabeth's ear.

"Half an inch to the left," said Stephen hastily, as he stood watching
her, "and--"

"Yes," she answered, "and then--." She looked up, seeing him
indistinctly in the flaring light of the candle. But in her mind there
was a fair woman standing beside him. But for Elizabeth's idle words
this vision would have been a reality instead of a a hopeless dream. She
felt the pain of this so keenly now that it seemed to her it would have
been a good thing if the ball had swerved half an inch to the left. Then
her father, who had been found on his way back, came in hastily, and as
Elizabeth glanced at his face she knew that life ought to be dear to
her.

"Elizabeth," he said, as Archdale left them, "have you not had enough of
it yet? Come home now. You have already done a great work."

The girl raised herself slowly, for she still felt a touch of faintness.

"Yes, father, I will go home at once," she answered, "if you will tell
me that it is the sort of thing that you have been trying all my life to
teach me to do."

After Mr. Royal had left her, and Nancy was asleep, Elizabeth lay a long
time thinking. She perceived now the whole truth about Edmonson. She was
in a coil of struggle, and perhaps of crime. It seemed as if she herself
must be guilty, as all th