the flickering of the shadows in the raw chill of eve. All around was deathly still. Not so much as the cluck of a hen to break the misty silence. 

“On guard!” The Chevalier was about eight paces off. He now came slowly forward, eagerly watching for the right moment to engage. A swift movement as of a strong spring unbound--a flash--and steel clashed on steel. Yes, the young man could fence. The true swordsman’s wrist could be felt in his blade, the swordsman’s eye in his point, and his passes came with the ease of that mastery of style, swiftness, and precision that the fencer can feel but not describe. For a couple of minutes both played with the greatest caution, for they were both in the deadliest earnest. True, this was idle flummery at present; each had still to know the ground, to learn the secrets of those cruelly baffling lights, to get the measure of the other’s powers. A false step, a misjudged lunge, a gust of wind, a foolish contempt might mean death. And for one, at least, the issue was Denise. 

So André, who had always relied on his fire and quickness to disconcert, flurry, and tempt, kept himself sternly in hand, offering no openings and disregarding all. The moment would come presently, the divine moment, and then! They were both shifting ground slowly, and in their caution they gradually edged and wheeled until the Chevalier almost stood where André had started. “Bah!” the young man cried, “this is tedious,” and he suddenly changed his tactics. He was now attacking with a fiery swiftness which made André’s blood warm, and stirred his admiration, but he noted with joy how reckless his opponent was growing. Twice the lad only saved himself by the most dexterous reversing of his lunges. “Fool!” André muttered to himself, “that is not the game to play with me; in three minutes he will be mine,” and he, too, began to press his attack. Ah!--ah!--only by the swiftest convolutions of that supple body had the Chevalier saved himself. André began to nerve himself for a final assault. Should he give him the point in his sword arm--his shoulder, or his lungs? And then the torch light flared right into his face. 

In a second he saw what it all meant. By those superb reversed lunges he had been lured on till he had been manœuvred into a place where both torches fell in his eyes and that young devil had the lights behind him. He--he, André de Nérac, had been outplayed by this beardless youth! And now he was in a corner of this damned court-yard with the cursed flicker from the walls making lightning on the crossed steel. “Diable!” he growled, “you would!” and he flung himself on his opponent in the madness 

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