pink cheeks had lost none of their pink, and, as always, he smiled while he fought; but his heart was solemn within him, for he knew that in a dozen years he had faced no such swordsman as this.
He knew that his was the greater skill the more consummate artistry; but he knew also that the difference was very slight, so slight that Falcon's longer reach and superior strength atoned for it. And while Mr. O'Sullivan prayed, he schemed and studied and calculated, his thoughts reaching into the future even while his hand and eye dealt with the deadly, imminent present. Barring some accident, some unlikely mischance, the victory would come, he believed, to him whose endurance met the test. On this theory he based his battle.
For those who looked on, the world round about them had ceased to exist. To Jock Pearson, to Ugly Meg, to the pack-horse drivers, it had seemed at first an unequal battle. They knew nothing of the art of the sword. They saw a tall, powerful man, a seasoned soldier, bronzed and arrogant and thewed like Jock Pearson himself, great of shoulder, yet slim of waist and clean of limb, matched against a small, plump, white-haired, woman-voiced gentleman who might have been a lawyer's clerk or a minister of the Gospel. To them it appeared that only one ending was possible. And the first stage of the fight had served to confirm their judgment, for at the outset Falcon took the offensive, driving his antagonist before him.
But there were more practiced eyes than these in
