weapon with which duels to the death are not unseldom fought, he stood
before the student.

"Had you been a gentleman," began the major, with a sullen courtesy,
extorted from him by the gallantry of his antagonist.

"A stick to a dog!" retorted the latter, falling into the position of
guard with an ease and accuracy which caused the other to begin his work
by feints and attacks not followed up too rashly, in order to test him.

This time, it was the stouter and more brutal man who played cautiously
and the younger and more refined who was spurred into recklessness by
the contiguity of the fair Helen--or, rather, Esther--who had caused the
fray.

The girl stood at the end of the bridge, opposite to Baboushka at hers,
there making them simple lookers-on. The old Jew seemed eager to join
in the struggle, but the staves were in continual swing, and he could
not draw near without the risk of having a shoulder dislocated, or, at
least, his knuckles severely rapped. In the gloom, his hovering about
the involved pair would have led an opera-goer to have seen in him the
demon who thus actively presides at the fatal duel of Faust and
Valentine.

But the conflict, whatever the major's wariness, could not be long
protracted, for canes of this sort are tiring to the arm, unlike
smallswords; he was still on the defensive when the student assailed him
with a shower of blows which taxed all his skill and nerve, and the
strength of the staff which he had borrowed from his foe. Well may one
suspect "the gifts of an enemy!" as the student might have cited: