“After this he kept a greater distance, but continued to circle round and pour out an unceasing torrent of foul words.  But he had not the faintest idea how to use a stick, whereas my practice with the foils at the gymnasium had made me quite skilful.  From time to time he raised his bludgeon and ran in at me, but a sharp prod under the upraised arm always sent him leaping back out of reach with the inevitable ‘Ow—­er!’

“His lack of skill deprived the encounter of much of its interest.  I think he felt this himself, for I saw him looking about furtively as if in search of something.  Then he espied a large and knobbly flint and would have picked it up; but as he was stooping I plied the point of my stick so vigorously that he staggered back with yelps of pain.

“And now it was suddenly borne in upon me that he had had enough.  I realized it just in time to plant myself on the track between him and the entrance to the chalk-pit.  He was still as savage and murderous as ever, but his nerve was gone.  He shrank away from me and as I followed closely he tried again and again to dodge past towards the opening.

“’Look ‘ere, mister,’ he said at length, ’you chuck it and I’ll let yer go peaceable.’

“Let me go!  I laughed scornfully, but stood my ground.  And yet it was unpleasant.  One cannot go on hammering a beaten man and it is difficult to refuse a surrender.  On the other hand, it was out of the question to let this fellow go.  He had come here prepared to murder me for a paltry watch and a handful of loose change.  Common justice and my duty to my fellow men demanded his elimination.  Besides, if I let him escape into the open, what would happen?  The fields were sprinkled with big flints.  It was practically certain that I should never leave the neighborhood alive.

“Even as I stood hesitating, he furnished an illustrative commentary on my thoughts.  Springing back from me, he suddenly stooped and caught up a great flint nodule; and though I ducked quickly as he flung it and so avoided its full force, I caught such a buffet as it glanced off the side of my head as convinced me that a settlement must be speedily arrived at.  Rushing in on him, I bore him backwards until he was penned up in the entrance of one of the caverns against the shafts of a wagon.  Then suddenly he changed his tactics.  Realizing at last that a clumsily-wielded bludgeon is powerless against a stick expertly handled rapier-wise, he dropped his club, and the next moment the moonbeams flashed from the broad blade of a knife.  This was quite a different affair.  He now stood on guard with the knife poised and his left hand outspread ready to snatch at my stick.  It was a much more effective plan; only he did not know that inside my stout malacca reposed a keen Toledo sword-blade.