beaten now,
it made him determined not to give up the contest; it made him wish too
that he was in a country where duelling was not considered absurd. At
any rate he was minded to rebuke Harry.

"You're a young man----" he began.

"Tell me that when I'm beaten. It may console me," interrupted Harry.

"You'll be beaten, sir, sooner than you think," said Duplay gravely.
"But though you refuse my offer, I shall consider Lady Tristram. I will
not move while she lives, unless you force me to it."

"By marrying the heiress you want?" sneered Harry.

"By carrying out your swindling plans." Duplay's temper began to fail
him. "Listen. As soon as your engagement is announced--if it ever is--I
go to Mr Iver with what I know. If you abandon the idea of that
marriage, you're safe from me. I have no other friends here; the rest
must look after themselves. But you shall not delude my friends with
false pretences."

"And I shall not spoil your game with Miss Iver?"

Duplay's temper quite failed him. He had not meant this to happen; he
had pictured himself calm, Harry wild and unrestrained--either in fury
or in supplication. The young man had himself in hand, firmly in hand;
the elder lost self-control.

"If you insult me again, sir, I'll throw you in the river!"

Harry's slow smile broke across his face. With all his wariness and
calculation he measured the Major's figure. The attitude of mind was not
heroic; it was Harry's. Who, having ten thousand men, will go against
him that has twenty thousand? A fool or a hero, Harry would have said,
and he claimed neither name. But in the end he reckoned that he was a
match for the Major. He smiled more broadly and raised his brows, asking
of sky and earth as he glanced round:

"Since when have blackmailers grown so sensitive?"

In an instant Duplay closed with him in a struggle on which hung not
death indeed, but an unpleasant and humiliating ducking. The rain fell
on both; the water waited for one. The Major was taller and heavier;
Harry was younger and in better trim. Harry was cooler too. It was rude
hugging, nothing more; neither of them had skill or knew more tricks
than the common dimly remembered devices of urchinhood. The fight was
most unpicturesque, most unheroic; but it was tolerably grim for all
that. The grass grew slippery under the rain and the slithering feet;
luck had its share. And just behind them ran the Queen's highway. They
did not think of the Queen's highwa