Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/386

 He swung open the door. O'Rourke looked into his eyes, and smiled contemptuously. "A small lot," he commented: "a petty revenge. I'm pleased to be able to breathe air unpolluted by ye, monsieur. Good night."

He turned and confronted the black, vacant oblong made by the open door. The frost-laden wind slapped his cheeks and pinched his nose. Without, there was unrelieved night. O'Rourke negatived the proposition, mentally. He did not know what lurked out there, in the blackness. He would have much preferred to leave the castle and come out at once upon the lighted road. And he stepped back toward De Brissac.

"If 'tis not too great a strain upon your courtesy," he suggested, "I'd prefer to leave be the way I entered, monsieur."

Abruptly he became aware that De Brissac was making for him with outstretched, clutching hands, and the apparent intention of seizing O'Rourke and casting him forth bodily into the outer darkness.

The Irishman did not precisely comprehend; but he was quick to step to one side and to meet De Brissac's rush with a blow from the shoulder, delivered with all the strength that was in him. It struck the man's chest, glancing, and staggered him for the moment; and that instant O'Rourke improved by grappling with him.

Neither spoke. O'Rourke was bewildered, but in some vague way aware that he was fighting for his very existence. De Brissac was straining, with set teeth, to break the Irishman's hold upon him. For many minutes they swayed back and forth and from side to side, there in the narrow, stone-walled passage in the old castle.

At length, De Brissac stumbled and went to his knees. He was up again in a trice, but in the struggle to regain his