penetrating thrust that he had promised himself and Meg Pearson; and sixty seconds later he had felt O'Sullivan's point prick his chest and had saved himself barely in time. Thus at the outset each had tested the other's mettle, each had learned caution, had perceived the hollowness of the boast that each had uttered.
None knew it, but Mr. Francis O'Sullivan was praying as he fought. With all his adoration of the pagan Greeks, he was a pious man and he was aware that he needed now that help from Heaven which, in time of stress, he had never been loath to ask. If Falcon, like most soldiers of fortune, had felt scorn for the fencing teachers, the schoolmen of the sword, here was one rapier schoolman who had scorned the sword-work of most soldiers. O'Sullivan had tried scores of them, and, while many were good artisans with the rapier, there were not many whom he would rank as artists. But in all the world there were very few men known to him whom he would admit to that exalted rank—Leuthen of Vienna, the Duke of Beaujeu, Vanzetti of Milan, Gotteschalke of Strasbourg, De Bon of Paris, his old fencing partner, Murtzulph the Mohammedan, and perhaps a half-dozen others. And now in raw America, where the rifle was honoured above the sword and where good swordsmen were rare, he had found another artist of the rapier, this Captain Lance Falcon.
So Mr. O'Sullivan prayed, though he was careful that none should be aware of his praying. His smooth
