e things about you
I do not like, and if that will remedy your conceit, I'm going to do it
for you--for any sort of wager you like."

"Money against your horse?" he inquired, stripping to his ruffled shirt
as he spoke. "A hundred guineas, five hundred?"

"Yes, for the horse," I said. "He's worth ten thousand. But if you've
two or three hundred to pay for my soiling the shoulders of your shirt,
I'm willing to let the odds stand so."

He smiled at me simply--I swear almost winningly, such was the quality
of the man.

"I like you," he said simply. "If all the men of this country resembled
you, all the world could not beat it."

I was stripped by this time myself, and so, without pausing to consider
the propriety on either side of our meeting in this sudden encounter in
a public street, we went at it as though we had made a rendezvous there
for that express purpose, with no more hesitation and no more fitness
than two game cocks which might fall fighting in a church in case they
met there.

Orme came to me with no hurry and no anxiety, light on his feet as a
skilled fencer. As he passed he struck for my shoulder, and his grip,
although it did not hold, was like the cutting of a hawk's talons. He
branded me red with his fingers wherever he touched me, although the
stroke of his hand was half tentative rather than aggressive. I went to
him with head low, and he caught me at the back of the neck with a
stroke like that of a smiting bar; but I flung him off, and so we
stepped about, hands extended, waiting for a hold. He grew eager, and
allowed me to catch him by the wrist. I drew him toward me, but he
braced with his free arm bent against my throat, and the more I pulled,
the more I choked. Then by sheer strength I drew his arm over my
shoulder as I had that of Harry Singleton. He glided into this as though
it had been his own purpose, and true as I speak I think he aided me in
throwing him over my head, for he went light as a feather, and fell on
his feet when I freed him. I was puzzled not a little, for the like of
this I had not seen in all my meetings with good men.

As we stepped about cautiously, seeking to engage again, his eye was
fixed on mine curiously, half contemplatively, but utterly without
concern or fear of any kind. I never saw an eye like his. It gave me not
fear, but horror! The more I encountered him, the more uncanny he
appeared. The lock of the arm at the back of the neck, those holds known
as th