e said, with a threatening look which belied his
words. "I will not be forced into a quarrel here."

"Here or outside, I care not," says I, "but I swear you shall take
back the slander you have cast upon a woman you are not fit to speak
with!"

"D--n you!" says Rupert, "do you want me to fight for a----"

He got no farther, for with that I caught up the dice-box and dashed
it between his eyes, so that he fairly staggered back, and the blood
started from his nostrils. And then, almost before I knew what was
happening, his sword was out, and mine was clashing against it, and
the table was overturned on the floor, and then there was a rush and a
shout, and some one was holding me back from behind, while Mr. Sims
and the boatswain stood between us, and Rupert, with a look on his
face which I had never seen there before, was saying in a very steady
voice--

"Gentlemen, you may arrange it as you please, but take notice that it
must be _a la mort_."

CHAPTER IV

"_A LA MORT_"

So it had come to this, that before the dust of my father's fields was
well off my shoes I was committed to a duel to the death with a
desperate, vindictive man, who had been steeped in bloodshed before I
had ever handled a sword, and that man my own near kinsman.

At the time I was less frightened than I have often been since in
thinking over it. The others were more alarmed for me than I was for
myself, and I heard Mr. Sims and old Muzzy urging upon Rupert to let
the matter go no further. But this he would not now hear of, and in
the state of mind I was then in I should have been little better
satisfied than he to have had the affair patched up.

At last they saw it was of no use to seek an accommodation between us,
and they withdrew together to settle how we were to fight, Captain
Sims, as I understood, acting in my cousin's interest, while the
boatswain did the same office for me.

While they were discussing it, which it took them some time to do,
Rupert and I sat on opposite sides of the room. He put on a great air
of indifference, talking familiarly with those of his friends who
stood about him, while I could do nothing but stare across at him with
a horrible fascination, as the man by whose hand, in all likelihood, I
was to die within the next half-hour. I remember noting for the first
time what a finely formed person he had, tall and supple as a lath of
steel. As far as that went I was no weakling, and I have been told
that