THREE MEN AND A MAID.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9031, 18 January 1908, Page 2

THREE MEN AND A MAID.

CHAPTER Vl.—Continued. Despite the passion impatiently pent within them, the two men went through the whole rite of the salute as in their usual practice for healthful amusement. They took position and distance, with lecognition to the left, and recognition to the right, engagement in tirece. and saluting with the swords. Courthope being the elder, took distance first, and became the attacker.

Down now they settled their weight on their thighs, with knees bent, right feet forward, left hands hung up in the air behind their heads, the length of steel out in their right, and they set themselves to stab and parry. As Courthope lunged high up in the inside line to Philip's left, and Philip took opposition in quarte, a solitary wind that arose went away moaning of it to the moors, and no other souad for what seemed a long time was to be heard there, taut the rasping of the blades, or a breath from their throats, or, it might be, a mortal thumping of human hearts in

all their trouble and plight. Here was no meeting guided by blind chance, since each knew the other's style, little plots, and tricks and feints, to ths last degree, and each long since hao become a master of the game. Though Robert Courthope's manner of life was never such as to admit of a high ritness of all the muscles of the body, ho was bighanded, strong in play of thumb and forefinger, and he had this pull over Warren, that Philip was something of a pedant in the art, and even now, in a supreme moment of his life, stuck to old - fashioned tricks and ways, not because he thought them good, but merely because they were old, making the a-)tiquated appel

with the sole of the foot in his lunges, engaging too much in low linos with old-world parries, and the like.

Still, to an onlooker there could have been small doubt from the first as to which of the two was the better man here. Within one minute Courthope's blood spurted, when, on a disengage from tierce into quarte, Philip parried quarte with a tap as sharp as a gun-lock's click. While his adversary stood forward onihe lunge, disconcerted by the driving off of the blade, he lunged back with the tac-au-tac riposte —a lightning movement of the arm without a stirring of tie body—and drew red from the breast.

Courthope was in retreat to the very wall at his back.

"Hit, sir!" panted Warren, but there was no answer, for on the instant Courthope was at it again, planted on guard,, again engaged in quarte, with so furious a quickness that Philip met the threatening rapier with bis own point rather too low, upon which Courthope vigorously attacked, seizing the forte of Warren's blade with the faible of his own, passing his point over Warren's hilt, and lunging in the exterior line with his hand turned upward, at the same time taking marked opposition to the right. But to this twist and lunge assault, always one of Courthope's strongest, Warren was nn stranger. Having in an instant righted himself from his surprise he yielded his sword completely at first to Courthope's thrust without losing touch, dropped his hand, raised his point deftly, eo that the blades were again in the quarte position-, and taking opposition on that line, escaped with little more than a scratch. In another moment, his body remaining in the position of guard, he had his arm extended in a feint in tierce, "upon which Courthope, startled at the sight of the point so close to him, almost involuntarily attempted to parry in tierce.

And now Warren, lowering his point, lunged and would have struck his enemy deeply in seconde, but for a retreat, which again brought Courthope's back to the wall, and a breath burdened with foreboding from the depth of his breast. Yet, darting forward anew to the fight, desperate now, panting, growing all loose in wind and wil', he again engaged Warren in the inner line in quarte, and sought to make the straight thrust. It was useless. Warren had taken strong opposition to the left, so Courthope made a coupe, heaving up his point by the action of his thumb and forefinger to attack his foe in an outside line. This, too, came to naught, for Warren, describing a circle with his point, again caught Courthope's blade, and giving it a rap, once more took opposition in quarte. At this point Courthope boiled with an inward heat to have the deadly traffic done with. He beat upon Warren's blade to paralyse and get it out of the way so that he might pierce his adversary's body and make an end, and, when his intent was baulked, he attacked Warren's blade by pressure—the two swords all this while being in quarte—pressing his enemy's steel outward and outward, with all his own five fingers at Wurk upon his own hilt, pressing while his teeth grinned, pressing with the \ igour of his manhood heaved into thi; evil strain, his brow grown red and ribbed, and from his mouth gasped forth the groan:

£ "What a wrist!" jj That wriat of Warren's was grim •enough,and the effort lasted not long; Warren attempted to snatch a lunge, but the next moment was parrying in tierce. He met Courthope's blade ■ smartly.- Courthope's point was too low, and Warren, seizing with the forte of his sword the point-end of Courthope's, with a vigorous pressure of all the fingers brought his point down to Courthope's hilt, keeping touch meanwhile, and so .giving the opposing sword a scrape which would have unnerved many a iiand. It perhaps unnerved Courthope's,

By ROBERT ERASER.

[Published By Special Arrangement.] [All Rights Reserved.]

bat the certain result was not attained, for, at the very culmination of the deadly attack, as it were, the moon above them went out, or hid her face, and refused to witness the imminent disaster. It was so sudden, this diving into cloud of their only light, that for the moment both men were blinded and made distraught by it. Neither could have recounted what movements of the swords were made during the next few seconds. Warren had an idea, that Courthope again essayed the flanconnade attack with engagement in quarte, and that he again parried, or almost parried.

But the next thing which distinctly arose there in that gloom of two poor human spirits struggling in their mortal straits, and that darkening of the sky and night about them, was a cry from the heart of Warren which he could hardly smother. He was not wounded, only slightly pricked in the middle finger of the right hand, but into the whirl and distraction of his mind the consciousness suddenly had birth that his signet-ring, the lucky stone of his race, had been snapped, and was gone. The finger in which it had embedded itself since his buyhood felt itself light of the ring. He had lost his talisman!

With that gasping of Warren's bosom a sob now mingled itself. He fought on manfully, despairingly, but from that moment the fight was really done, for Philip seemed to be fighting against that which is more than man. Indeed, such a thing as the snapping of the ring in the very acme oi his flurry of soul had naturally upon him the fatalest effects. Immediately afterwards he found himself engaged in quarte with Courthope, but in his disarraj of mind, his point was much too low. A little light was sent down by the burrowing moon; Robert Courthope easily now seized the faibla of his foe's sword with the forte of his, and by a powerful, but intensely swift sweep, forced down Philip's blade into seconde with a paralysing scrape and twist which quice lossened the weapon in the strong hand which held it

And then, Philip Warren's small sword clattered down upon the graveslabs and grass! "Got you, Warren—disarmed!" came in the faintest pant from the depths of Courthope's heart, while, with shortened sword, he held Warren pinned against the west wall. "Courthope'— have mercy kill me!" toiled in the broken breath cf utter agony from Warren's breast. "No, I don't—got you—disarmed!" gasped Courthope again. I "Kill, man!" "No—got you— " "Will you? Won't you, then?" "No—keep your word—disarmed—"

"Courthope, I conjure you. . ." Nc—disarmed, Warren." "For God's sak?, Courthope!" "No, keep your word " "Yes, but finish it, man!" "No. I have your pledged word. . . . . Yes, God, disarmed!" "I lost my ring. . . ." "Which ring? . . . Go—ninethirty—five years." "Let me look——" , "No, go—keep you word " "Don't pin me! Give me room! How dare you. . . . 1" "Do you keep your word?" "Yes, but air to breathe, let me look " • "No—your'e beaten. You must go now —by the nine-thirty train —five years!"

Those were Robert Courthope's last recorded words on earth. An ungovernable frenzy of passion boiled up in Warren's blood, and with such a fury did he spring empty-handed upon his victorious rival, that Courthope, taken unaware, was on his back on the gravestones before either man knew what had happened. Then Philip, unnerved and horrified, "scared at himself, at the eruption of his own rage, at the tarnishing of his honour, leapt the slab across the entrance, and was running wild, plunging through the bracken over the boundary stone, down to the water-side and along it, as if, flying from death, his hair lifting on the winds, his eyes agaze with suffering. By the time he reached the bridge he was quite breathless, but still at a mechanical trot he went on, over the bric'ge up the steep of the village street, and the three or four boys and girls still playing at that hour out of doors gaped at the sight of the distracted man who rushed past them. (To be continued.)