They broke out upon a brown semicircle of sand, so free from human imprint as to justify Turnbull’s profession.  They strode out upon it, stuck their swords in the sand, and had a pause too important for speech.  Turnbull eyed the coast curiously for a moment, like one awakening memories of childhood; then he said abruptly, like a man remembering somebody’s name:  “But, of course, we shall be better off still round the corner of Cragness Point; nobody ever comes there at all.”  And picking up his sword again, he began striding towards a big bluff of the rocks which stood out upon their left.  MacIan followed him round the corner and found himself in what was certainly an even finer fencing court, of flat, firm sand, enclosed on three sides by white walls of rock, and on the fourth by the green wall of the advancing sea.

“We are quite safe here,” said Turnbull, and, to the other’s surprise, flung himself down, sitting on the brown beach.

“You see, I was brought up near here,” he explained.  “I was sent from Scotland to stop with my aunt.  It is highly probable that I may die here.  Do you mind if I light a pipe?”

“Of course, do whatever you like,” said MacIan, with a choking voice, and he went and walked alone by himself along the wet, glistening sands.

Ten minutes afterwards he came back again, white with his own whirlwind of emotions; Turnbull was quite cheerful and was knocking out the end of his pipe.

“You see, we have to do it,” said MacIan.  “She tied us to it.”

“Of course, my dear fellow,” said the other, and leapt up as lightly as a monkey.

They took their places gravely in the very centre of the great square of sand, as if they had thousands of spectators.  Before saluting, MacIan, who, being a mystic, was one inch nearer to Nature, cast his eye round the huge framework of their heroic folly.  The three walls of rock all leant a little outward, though at various angles; but this impression was exaggerated in the direction of the incredible by the heavy load of living trees and thickets which each wall wore on its top like a huge shock of hair.  On all that luxurious crest of life the risen and victorious sun was beating, burnishing it all like gold, and every bird that rose with that sunrise caught a light like a star upon it like the dove of the Holy Spirit.  Imaginative life had never so much crowded upon MacIan.  He felt that he could write whole books about the feelings of a single bird.  He felt that for two centuries he would not tire of being a rabbit.  He was in the Palace of Life, of which the very tapestries and curtains were alive.  Then he recovered himself, and remembered his affairs.  Both men saluted, and iron rang upon iron.  It was exactly at the same moment that he realized that his enemy’s left ankle was encircled with a ring of salt water that had crept up to his feet.

“What is the matter?” said Turnbull, stopping an instant, for he had grown used to every movement of his extraordinary fellow-traveller’s face.