way,” he said politely; “permit me to show you, with infinite regret, where you can kill me.” 

Half expecting a trick or foul play André followed him cautiously until he stopped in a deserted stable yard, paved and clean, and completely shut in by high walls. The young man gravely placed one torch in a ring on the north wall and the other on the wall opposite. “That,” he said, in the pleasantest manner possible, “will make the lights fair. You”--he pointed to the west--“will stand there, or here, if you prefer, to the east. You will agree, doubtless, that to a man who is to be killed it is a trifle where he stands.” 

The torches flared smokily in the April dusk. He was mad, this boyish fool, stark, raving mad. But how prettily and elegantly he played the part. 

“See,” the Chevalier said lightly, “there is no one to interrupt--the murder. Toinette knows neither my name nor yours; she will hold her tongue for money and in half an hour you will be gone--and I”--he shrugged his shoulders--“well, it is clean lying here, cleaner, anyway, than under the grass in that dirty churchyard.” 

“You mean it?” André asked slowly. 

The Chevalier took off his saucy hat and fine coat, hung them upon one of the rusty rings in the wall, and turned back his lace ruffles. A flash--his sword had cut a rainbow through the dusk across the yellow flare of the torches. “I am at your service, Vicomte,” he said with a low bow. “And I shall return to the château when and how I please, and I shall be welcome, eh?” 

“By God!” André ripped out. “By God! I will kill you.” He too had flung off his coat and cloak and took the position by the east wall. A strange duel this, assuredly not the first in which the Vicomte de Nérac had fought for a woman’s sake, but the strangest, maddest that man’s wit or a boy’s folly could have devised. André was as cold as ice now, and he calmly surveyed his opponent as he tried the steel of his blade. How young and supple and insolently gay the beardless popinjay was; but he had the fencer’s figure, and the handling of his weapon revealed to the trained eye that this would be no affair of six passes and a _coup de maître_. Yet never did André feel so calmly confident of his own famed skill and rich experience. No, he would not kill him, but he would teach him a lesson that he would not forget. 

For a brief minute both scanned the ground carefully, testing it with their feet, and marking the falling of the lights from those smoking torches, 

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