Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/392

 "You have no sins, then," asked the duke, with evident surprise, "for which to crave forgiveness ere you die?"

"Monsieur," returned the Irishman, "if ye are not on guard at once—your blood be upon your own head!"

He threw himself into position, facing his antagonist, and saluted. The duke laughed evilly, and carelessly touched O'Rourke's blade with his own.

A second later he was retreating swiftly down the hall—falling back under an onslaught the like of which he had seldom experienced, in point of sheer audacity and cunning.

But he parried with amazing ease, giving ground until he had recovered from his surprise, and permitting the impetuous Irishman to tire himself to the fill of his satisfaction.

"This is not so bad," he jeered. "It is, in fact, somewhat a pleasure to cross swords with a man who knows his weapon."

"The pleasure will be short-lived, I promise ye!" retorted O'Rourke.

The firelight flickered like lightning upon the crossed blades. The stamping of their feet was like dull thunder upon the padded fencing place.

The duke did not attempt again to speak. There was an anxious look in his eyes; he was trying to fathom the school by whose precepts O'Rourke fought—and trying in vain; for O'Rourke fought with the cunning and the technique of all schools, or, when occasion demanded, audaciously, according to his own inspiration of the moment. Possibly he was the most dangerous broadswordsman in the world; certainly his equal was not to be found in all Europe—not even at Castle Grandlieu in the person of the redoubtable Duke Victor himself.

And the duke was realizing that fact. He was tacitly