path, and by tacit
consent our swords were still. We listened.

"Richard! Richard Carvel!"

For the second time in my life I thanked Heaven for that brave and loyal
English heart. I called back, but my throat was dry and choked.

"So they are at their d--d assassins' tricks again! You need have no
fear of one murderer."

With that their steels rang out behind me, like broadswords, Lewis
wasting his breath in curses and blasphemies. I began to push Chartersea
with all my might, and the wonder of it was that we did not fight with
our fingers on each other's necks. His attacks, too, redoubled. Twice I
felt the stings of his point, once in the hand, and once in the body, but
I minded them as little as pinpricks. I was sure I had touched him, too.
I heard him blowing distressedly. The casks of wine he had drunk in his
short life were telling now, and his thrusts grew weaker. That fiercest
of all joys--of killing an enemy--was in me, when I heard a cry that rang
in my ears for many a year afterward, and the thud of a body on the
ground.

"I have done for him, your Grace," says Lewis, with an oath; and added
immediately, "I think I hear people."

Before I had reached my Lord the captain repeated this, and excitedly
begged the duke, I believe, to fly. Chartersea hissed out that he would
not move a step until he had finished me, and as I bent over the body his
point popped through my coat, and the pain shot under my shoulder. I
staggered, and fell. A second of silence ensued, when the duke said with
a laugh that was a cackle:

"He won't marry her, d--n him!" (panting). "He had me cursed near
killed, Lewis. Best give him another for luck."

I felt his heavy hand on the sword, and it tearing out of me. Next came
the single word "Dover," and they were gone. I had not lost my senses,
and was on my knees again immediately, ripping open Comyn's waistcoat
with my left hand, and murmuring his name in an agony of sorrow. I was
searching under his shirt, wet with blood, when I became aware of voices
at my side. "A duel! A murder! Call the warders! Warders, ho!"

"A surgeon!" I cried. "A surgeon first of all!"

Some one had wrenched a lamp from the Grand Walk and held it, flickering
in the wind, before his Lordship's face. Guided by its light, more
people came running through the wood, then the warders with lanthorns,
headed by Mr. Tyers, and on top of him Mr. Fitzpatrick and my Lord
Carlisle. We carried poor Jack to the house