lsters and began to measure distances
and calculate chances.

Bang! One saddle empty. Bang! another one. Bang--bang, and
I bagged two. Well, it was nip and tuck with us, and I knew it.
If I spent the eleventh shot without convincing these people,
the twelfth man would kill me, sure. And so I never did feel
so happy as I did when my ninth downed its man and I detected
the wavering in the crowd which is premonitory of panic. An instant
lost now could knock out my last chance. But I didn't lose it.
I raised both revolvers and pointed them--the halted host stood
their ground just about one good square moment, then broke and fled.

The day was mine. Knight-errantry was a doomed institution. The
march of civilization was begun. How did I feel? Ah, you never
could imagine it.

And Brer Merlin? His stock was flat again. Somehow, every time
the magic of fol-de-rol tried conclusions with the magic of science,
the magic of fol-de-rol got left.

CHAPTER XL

THREE YEARS LATER

When I broke the back of knight-errantry that time, I no longer
felt obliged to work in secret. So, the very next day I exposed
my hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestine
factories and workshops to an astonished world. That is to say,
I exposed the nineteenth century to the inspection of the sixth.

Well, it is always a good plan to follow up an advantage promptly.
The knights were temporarily down, but if I would keep them so
I must just simply paralyze them--nothing short of that would
answer. You see, I was "bluffing" that last time in the field;
it would be natural for them to work around to that conclusion,
if I gave them a chance. So I must not give them time; and I didn't.

I renewed my challenge, engraved it on brass, posted it up where
any priest could read it to them, and also kept it standing in
the advertising columns of the paper.

I not only renewed it, but added to its proportions. I said,
name the day, and I would take fifty assistants and stand up
_against the massed chivalry of the whole earth and destroy it_.

I was not bluffing this time. I meant what I said; I could do
what I promised. There wasn't any way to misunderstand the language
of that challenge. Even the dullest of the chivalry perceived
that this was a plain case of "put up, or shut up." They were
wise and did the latter. In all the next three years they gave
me no trouble worth mentioning.

Consider the three years s