It drove the despair out of me, and I was a new man. I tried the
blade, its point upon my toe. It was good metal, and the grip
fitted me.

"Well, how do you find it?" said he, impatiently.

"I am satisfied," was my reply.

He helped me take off my blouse and waistcoat, and then I rolled my
sleeves to the elbow. The hum of voices had grown louder. I could
hear men offering to bet and others bantering for odds.

"We'll know soon," said a voice near me, "whether he could have
killed Ronley in a fair fight."

I turned to look at those few in the arena. There were half a
dozen of them now, surrounding my adversary, a man taller than the
rest, with a heavy neck and brawny arms and shoulders. He had come
out of the crowd unobserved by me. He also was stripped to the
shirt, and had rolled up his sleeves, and was trying the steel. He
had a red, bristling mustache and overhanging brows and a vulgar
face--not that of a man who settles his quarrel with the sword. I
judged a club or a dagger would have been better suited to his
genius. But, among fighters, it is easy to be fooled by a face.
In a moment the others had gone save his Lordship and that portly
bald-headed man I had heard him rebuke as "Sir Charles." My
adversary met me at the centre of the arena, where we shook hands.
I could see, or thought I could, that he was entering upon a
business new to him, for there was in his manner an indication of
unsteady nerves.

"Gentlemen, are you ready?" said his Lordship.

But there are reasons why the story of what came after should be
none of my telling. I leave it to other and better eyes that were
not looking between flashes of steel, as mine were. And then one
has never a fair view of his own fights.

[1] The intrepid Fitzgibbon, the most daring leader on the Canadian
frontier those days, told me long afterward that he knew the
building--a tall frame structure on the high shore of a tributary
of the St. Lawrence. It was built on a side of the bluff and used
originally as a depot for corn, oats, rye, and potatoes, that came
down the river in bateaux. The slide was a slanting box through
which the sacks of grain were conveyed to sloops and schooners
below. It did not pay and was soon abandoned, whereupon it was
rented by the secret order referred to above. The slide bottom was
coated with lard and used for the hazing of candidates. A prize
fight on the platform was generally a feature of the entertainm