“Right you are,” Roy answered, jarred by the look and tone more than the words.  “If you’re so dead keen, I’ll take you on.”

After that, Roy hoped exceedingly that luck might cast them in the same team.

But it fell out otherwise.

Lance drew red; Roy, blue.  Lance and Major Devines, of the Monmouths, were chosen as leaders.  They were the only two on the ground who wore no favours:  and they fronted each other with smiles of approval, their respective teams—­ten a side—­drawn up in two long lines; heads caged in wire-masks, tufted, with curly feathers, red and blue; ponies champing and pawing the air.  Not precisely a picturesque array; but if the plumes and trappings of chivalry were lacking, the spirit of it still nickered within; and will continue to flicker, just so long as modern woman will permit.

At the crack of a pistol they were off, full tilt; but there was no shock of lance on shield, no crash and clang of armour that ’could be heard at a mile’s distance,’ as in the days of Ivanhoe.  There was only the sharp rattle of fencing-sticks against each other and the masks, the clatter of eighty-eight hooves on hard ground; a lively confusion of horses and men, advancing, backing, ‘turning on a sixpence’ to meet a sudden attack; voices, Indian and English, shouting or cheering; and the intermittent call of the umpire declaring a player knocked out as his feather fluttered into the dust.  Clouds of dust enveloped them in a shifting haze.  They breathed dust.  It gritted between their teeth.  What matter?  They were having at each other in furious yet friendly combat; and, being Englishmen, they were perfectly happy; keen to win, ready to lose with a good grace and cheer the better man.

In none of them, perhaps, did the desire to win burn quite so fiercely as in Lance and Roy.  But more than ever, now, Roy shrank from a final tussle between them.  Surely there was one man of them all good enough to put Lance out of court.

For a time Major Devines kept him occupied.  While Roy accounted for two red feathers, the well-matched pair were making a fine fight of it up and down the field, to the tune of cheers and counter-cheers.

But it was the blue feather that fell; and Lance, swinging round, charged into the melee—­seven reds now, to six blue.

Twice, in the scrimmage, Roy came up against him, but managed to shift ground, leaving another man to tackle him.  Both times it was the blue feather that fell.  Steadily the numbers thinned.  Roy’s wrist and arm were tiring, a trifle; but resolve to win burned fiercely as ever.  By now it was clear to all who were the two best men in the field, and excitement rose as the numbers dwindled....

Four to three; blues leading.  Two all.  And at last—­an empty dusty arena; and they two alone in the midst, ringed in by thousands of faces, thousands of eyes....

Till that moment, the spectators had simply not existed for Roy.  Now, of a sudden, they crowded in on him—­tightly-wedged wall of humanity—­expectant, terrifying....