hed and spat, and, helped
by de Villehardouin, propped his elbow under him, rested his head on
hand, and coughed and spat again.

"A pleasant journey, Pasquini," I laughed to him in my red anger. "Pray
hasten, for the grass where you lie is become suddenly wet and if you
linger you will catch your death of cold."

When I made immediately to begin with de Goncourt, Bohemond protested
that I should rest a space.

"Nay," I said. "I have not properly warmed up." And to de Goncourt,
"Now will we have you dance and wheeze--Salute!"

De Goncourt's heart was not in the work. It was patent that he fought
under the compulsion of command. His play was old-fashioned, as any
middle-aged man's is apt to be, but he was not an indifferent swordsman.
He was cool, determined, dogged. But he was not brilliant, and he was
oppressed with foreknowledge of defeat. A score of times, by quick and
brilliant, he was mine. But I refrained. I have said that I was
devilish-minded. Indeed I was. I wore him down. I backed him away from
the moon so that he could see little of me because I fought in my own
shadow. And while I wore him down until he began to wheeze as I had
predicted, Pasquini, head on hand and watching, coughed and spat out his
life.

"Now, de Goncourt," I announced finally. "You see I have you quite
helpless. You are mine in any of a dozen ways. Be ready, brace
yourself, for this is the way I will."

And, so saying, I merely went from carte to tierce, and as he recovered
wildly and parried widely I returned to carte, took the opening, and
drove home heart-high and through and through. And at sight of the
conclusion Pasquini let go his hold on life, buried his face in the
grass, quivered a moment, and lay still.

"Your master will be four servants short this night," I assured de
Villehardouin, in the moment just ere we engaged.

And such an engagement! The boy was ridiculous. In what bucolic school
of fence he had been taught was beyond imagining. He was downright
clownish. "Short work and simple" was my judgment, while his red hair
seemed a-bristle with very rage and while he pressed me like a madman.

Alas! It was his clownishness that undid me. When I had played with him
and laughed at him for a handful of seconds for the clumsy boor he was,
he became so angered that he forgot the worse than little fence he knew.
With an arm-wide sweep of his rapier, as though it bore heft and a
cutting edge, he whis