the man after that.'

'On guard, sir!' I answered coldly--for he seemed to waver, and
be in doubt. 'It was an accident. It shall not avail you
again.'

Several voices cried 'Shame!' and one, 'You coward!' But the
Englishman stepped forward, a fixed look in his blue eyes. He
took his place without a word. I read in his drawn white face
that he had made up his mind to the worst, and his courage so won
my admiration that I would gladly and thankfully have set one of
the lookers-on--any of the lookers-on--in his place; but that
could not be. So I thought of Zaton's closed to me, of Pombal's
insult, of the sneers and slights I had long kept at the sword's
point; and, pressing him suddenly in a heat of affected anger, I
thrust strongly over his guard, which had grown feeble, and ran
him through the chest.

When I saw him lying, laid out on the stones with his eyes half
shut, and his face glimmering white in the dusk--not that I saw
him thus long, for there were a dozen kneeling round him in a
twinkling--I felt an unwonted pang. It passed, however, in a
moment. For I found myself confronted by a ring of angry faces
--of men who, keeping at a distance, hissed and cursed and
threatened me, calling me Black Death and the like.

They were mostly canaille, who had gathered during the fight, and
had viewed all that passed from the farther side of the railings.
While some snarled and raged at me like wolves, calling me
'Butcher!' and 'Cut-throat!' or cried out that Berault was at