e?"

"I want you to come with me and see it out," Asgill said. He wheeled
brusquely to the garden gate, but when he was within a pace of it he
paused and turned his head. "Mr. O'Beirne," he said, "I'm going in by
this gate, and it's not much to be expected I'll come out any way but
feet first. Will you be telling her, if you please, that I knew that
same?"

"I will," Morty answered, genuinely distressed. "But I'm asking, is
there no other way?"

"There is none," Asgill said. And he opened the gate.

Payton was waiting for him on the path under the yew-trees, with two of
his troopers on guard in the background. He had removed his coat and
vest, and stood, a not ungraceful figure, in the sunshine, bending his
rapier and feeling its point with his thumb. He was doing this when his
eyes surprised his opponent's entrance, and, without desisting from his
employment, he smiled.

If the other's courage had begun to wane--but, with all his faults,
Asgill was brave--that smile would have restored it. For it roused in
him a stronger passion than fear--the passion of hatred. He saw in the
man before him, the man with the cruel smile, who handled his weapon
with a scornful ease, a demon--a demon who, in pure malice, without
reason and without cause, would take his life, would rob him of joy and
love and sunshine, and hurl him into the blackness of the gulf. And he
was seized with a rage at once fierce and deliberate. This man, who
would kill him, and whom he saw smiling before him, he would kill! He
thirsted to set his foot upon his throat and squeeze, and squeeze the
life out of him! These were the thoughts that passed through his mind
as he paused an instant at the gate to throw off the encumbering coat.
Then he advanced, drawing his weapon as he moved, and fixing his eyes
on Payton; who, for his part, reading the other's thoughts in his
face--for more than once he had seen that look--put himself on his
guard without a word.

Asgill had no more than the rudimentary knowledge of the sword which
was possessed in that day by all who wore it. He knew that, given time
and the decent observances of the fencing-school, he would be a mere
child in Payton's hands; that it would matter nothing whether the sun
were on this side or that, or his sword the longer or the shorter by an
inch. The moment he was within reach therefore, and his blade touched
the other's he rushed in, lunging fiercely at his opponent's breast and
trusting to t