lton's boots and quite overflowed Father Beret's moccasins. An
execrable field for the little matter in hand. They gradually shifted
position. Now it was the Governor, then the priest, who had advantage
as to the light. For some time Father Beret seemed quite the shiftier
and surer fighter, but (was it his age telling on him?) he lost
perceptibly in suppleness. Still Hamilton failed to touch him. There
was a baffling something in the old man's escape now and again from
what ought to have been an inevitable stroke. Was it luck? It seemed to
Hamilton more than that--a sort of uncanny evasion. Or was it supreme
mastery, the last and subtlest reach of the fencer's craft?

Youth forced age slowly backward in the struggle, which at times took
on spurts so furious that the slender blades, becoming mere glints of
acicular steel, split the moonlight back and forth, up and down, so
that their meetings, following one another in a well-nigh continuous
stroke, sent a jarring noise through the air. Father Beret lost inch by
inch, until the fighting was almost over the body of Alice; and now for
the first time Hamilton became aware of that motionless something with
the white, luminous face in profile against the ground; but he did not
let even that unsettle his fencing gaze, which followed the sunken and
dusky eyes of his adversary. A perspiration suddenly flooded his body,
however, and began to drip across his face. His arm was tiring. A doubt
crept like a chill into his heart. Then the priest appeared to add a
cubit to his stature and waver strangely in the soft light. Behind him,
low against the sky, a wide winged owl shot noiselessly across just
above the prairie.

The soul of a true priest is double: it is the soul of a saint and the
soul of a worldly man. What is most beautiful in this duality is the
supreme courage with which the saintly spirit attacks the worldly and
so often heroically masters it. In the beginning of the fight Father
Beret let a passion of the earthly body take him by storm. It was well
for Governor Henry Hamilton that the priest was so wrought upon as to
unsettle his nerves, otherwise there would have been an evil heart
impaled midway of Father Beret's rapier. A little later the saintly
spirit began to assert itself, feebly indeed, but surely. Then it was
that Father Beret seemed to be losing agility for a while as he
backstepped away from Hamilton's increasing energy of assault. In his
heart the priest was