hborhood
alive.

"Even as I stood hesitating, he furnished an illustrative commentary on
my thoughts. Springing back from me, he suddenly stooped and caught up a
great flint nodule; and though I ducked quickly as he flung it and so
avoided its full force, I caught such a buffet as it glanced off the
side of my head as convinced me that a settlement must be speedily
arrived at. Rushing in on him, I bore him backwards until he was penned
up in the entrance of one of the caverns against the shafts of a wagon.
Then suddenly he changed his tactics. Realizing at last that a
clumsily-wielded bludgeon is powerless against a stick expertly handled
rapier-wise, he dropped his club, and the next moment the moonbeams
flashed from the broad blade of a knife. This was quite a different
affair. He now stood on guard with the knife poised and his left hand
outspread ready to snatch at my stick. It was a much more effective
plan; only he did not know that inside my stout malacca reposed a keen
Toledo sword-blade.

"I slipped my thumb on the press-button of the sword-stick and watched
him. From time to time he made a dash at me with his knife, and when I
prodded him back, he snatched at the stick. Again and again he nearly
caught it, but I was just a little too quick for him, and he fell back,
gasping and cursing, on the wagon-shafts. And then the end came with
inevitable suddenness. He rushed out on me with upraised knife. I
stopped him with a vigorous poke in the chest; but before I could whisk
away the stick he had clutched it with a howl of joy. I gave a final
drive, pressed the button and sprang back, leaving the scabbard-end in
his hand. Before he had realized what had happened, he darted out,
brandishing the knife, and came fairly on the point of the sword-blade.
At the same moment I must have lunged, though I was not aware of it,
for when he staggered back the handle was against his breast.

"It was over, and I had hardly realized that the final stage had begun.
In an instant, as it seemed, that yelping, murderous wretch had subsided
into a huddled, inert heap. It was a quick and merciful dispatch. By the
time I had cleaned the blade and replaced it in its scabbard, the last
twitchings had ceased. As I stood and looked down at him, I felt
something of the chill of an anticlimax. It had all gone off so easily.

"Now that it was finished, my thoughts went back to the final purpose of
my quest. Was this man, by any chance, the w