teeth over her lower lip again.

"We stood there, then, and watched Bernaldez take the clock from its
case. He held it to his ear to make sure that it was going. It
seemed to me that it ticked as loud up there as a clock ticks in a
room at night. Bernaldez set forward the hands till they stood at
five minutes to eleven. 'The eleventh hour,' said Mateo, with his
dry laugh. Bernaldez set the clock down again. He took off his hat
and threw it down to mark the ground. 'Ten paces,' he said, and,
turning on his heel, counted aloud. I looked half-instinctively at
his bared head. The tonsure was still visible to any who sought it;
for it was but half-grown over. Mateo counted his steps and then
turned. The clock gave a little tick, as such clocks do, four
minutes before they strike. It seemed to me to hurry its pace as we
three stood listening in that silence. We could hear the whisper of
the clouds as they hurried through the mountains. The clock gave
another click, and the two men raised their pistols of a similar
pattern. The little gong rang out, and immediately after two shots,
one following the other. Bernaldez had fired first. Mateo--a man
with a reputation to care for--took a moment longer for his aim. I
heard Bernaldez's bullet sing past his ear like a mosquito.
Bernaldez fell forward--thus, on his arm--and the clock had not
ceased striking when we stood over him; and Mateo had held the
pistol in his left hand."

The narrator finished abruptly with a quick gesture. All through
his story he had added a vividness to his description by quick
movements of the hand and head, by his flashing eyes, his southern
fire, so that his hearer could see the scene as he had seen it;
could feel the stillness of the mountains; could hear the whisper of