“I have settled everything with this gentleman, but I would beg of you, sir, to reconsider your choice of arms.  My friend will doubtless be ready enough to humour you, but you have picked a barbarous weapon for Christian use.”

“It’s my only means of defence,” I said.

“Then you stick to your decision?”

“Assuredly,” said I, and, with a shrug of the shoulders, he departed.

I did not attempt to sleep.  Faulkner told me that we were to meet the next morning half an hour after sunrise at a place in the forest a mile distant.  Each man was to fire one shot, but two pistols were allowed in case of a misfire.  All that night by the light of a lamp I got my weapons ready.  I summoned to my recollection all the knowledge I had acquired, and made sure that nothing should be lacking so far as human skill would go.  I had another pistol besides the one I called “Elspeth,” also made in Glasgow, but a thought longer in the barrel.  For this occasion I neglected cartouches, and loaded in the old way.  I tested my bullets time and again, and weighed out the powder as if it had been gold dust.  It was short range, so I made my charges small.  I tried my old device of wrapping each bullet in soft wool smeared with beeswax.  All this passed the midnight hours, and then I lay down for a little rest, but not for sleep.

I was glad when Faulkner summoned me half an hour before sunrise.  I remember that I bathed head and shoulders in cold water, and very carefully dressed myself in my best clothes.  My pistols lay in the box which Faulkner carried.  I drank a glass of wine, and as we left I took a long look at the place I had created, and the river now lit with the first shafts of morning.  I wondered incuriously if I should ever see it again.

My tremors had all gone by now, and I was in a mood of cold, thoughtless despair.  The earth had never looked so bright as we rode through the green aisles all filled with the happy song of birds.  Often on such a morning I had started on a journey, with my heart grateful for the goodness of the world.  Could I but keep the road, I should come in time to the swampy bank of the York; and then would follow the chestnut forest:  and the wide marshes towards the Rappahannock; and everywhere I should meet friendly human faces, and then at night I should eat a hunter’s meal below the stars.  But that was all past, and I was moving towards death in a foolish strife in which I had no heart, and where I could find no honour, I think I laughed aloud at my exceeding folly.

We turned from the path into an alley which led to an open space on the edge of a derelict clearing.  There, to my surprise, I found a considerable company assembled.  Grey was there with his second, and a dozen or more of his companions stood back in the shadow of the trees.  The young blood of Virginia had come out to see the trader punished.