Page:Marriott Watson--Galloping Dick.djvu/98

 in no hurry to quit. Yet why should we be at this labour for a man whom I do not reckon at a straw?”

“Fie, Ryder, fie!” says he, “to go back thus upon a friend!”

“Indeed,” said I, “’twas no friendship but a very common vanity set me on to this; and now that I am like to worst you, I am in no mind to slay a man for the value of a humour.”

“Worst me!” says he, with a touch of haughtiness; “my good man, I begin, for the first time, to think you have a fear.”

But this was too much for me, and I made no more effort to reconcile him, but, on the contrary, beset him lustily. And then began the last scene in that remarkable affair. We were both spent with fatigue, but he was farther gone than myself, and, besides, had his wound. We were now, according to my guess, somewhere about the middle of the room. We directed ourselves by instinct, and ’twas no saying whether the blade would run into the air, meet steel with steel, or cut and hack upon the body. I was, myself, picked out with a