laise rammed his sword-blade almost to
the hilt and laughed, panting.

"Rats!" he cried, tugging his arm backwards with a horrible jerk. "Go
to your hole, cur!" and more blood-drunken even than La Mothe he broke
into a village song.

"'Rosalie was soft and sweet;
Sweet to kiss, sweet to kiss:
Hair and month and cheek and feet,
Sweet to kiss, sweet to kiss.'

"Mademoiselle, fling in that praying lout from the corner and make some
use of him; it's all he's fit for."

But the gap was filled; there were two on the top-most step, and La
Follette, not only wounded in the thigh but slashed across the ribs,
was giving ground.

"Be ready, La Mothe," he said. His teeth were clenched and his chest
laboured heavily. "Be ready, Blaise."

"Ready," answered La Mothe, saving his breath. His heart was very
bitter. The twelve minutes were seventeen, succour could not be far
off, but the end had come. "Do you hear, Blaise?"

But Blaise was past hearing. While he fought with his right his maimed
left hand, cut to the bones, had torn his smock open from the throat,
and the hairy chest, smeared with his blood, glistened in broad drops
from the sweat of his labours. In such a hilt-to-hilt struggle his
ignorance was almost an advantage. He had nothing to unlearn, no rules
of fence to disregard, and his peasant's strength of arm whirled aside
an attack with a paralyzing power impossible to any skill. Right,
left, downward swept the blade, his knees and hips half bent as he
leaned forward, crouching, his left arm swinging as he swayed. Right,
left, downward, his blood-drunkenness growing in savage abandonment
with every minute. Yes, he was ready--ready in his own way--but past
hearing.

"Damn the English," was his answer to La Mothe, his mind back in the
fifty-year-old tragedy. The play was no make-believe, and he was
Michel Calvet, son to Jean the sixth, the Michel whose elder brother
had been coursed like a hare and killed in the open. Then his song
rose afresh, but gaspingly, raucously, as if the notes tore his chest.

"'Rosalie, I love you true;
Kiss me, sweet, kiss me, sweet.
Lov'st thou me as I love you?
Kiss me, sweet, kiss me, sweet.'

"Rats," said he! "Come up, y' cur dogs, come up."

"La Mothe," breathed La Follette, "when I say Now!"

Yes, the end had come.

"Damn the English," cried Blaise hoarsely. With a mighty stroke he
swept aside the opposing points, drew a choking