“So they are at their d—­d assassins’ tricks again!  You need have no fear of one murderer.”

With that their steels rang out behind me, like broadswords, Lewis wasting his breath in curses and blasphemies.  I began to push Chartersea with all my might, and the wonder of it was that we did not fight with our fingers on each other’s necks.  His attacks, too, redoubled.  Twice I felt the stings of his point, once in the hand, and once in the body, but I minded them as little as pinpricks.  I was sure I had touched him, too.  I heard him blowing distressedly.  The casks of wine he had drunk in his short life were telling now, and his thrusts grew weaker.  That fiercest of all joys—­of killing an enemy—­was in me, when I heard a cry that rang in my ears for many a year afterward, and the thud of a body on the ground.

“I have done for him, your Grace,” says Lewis, with an oath; and added immediately, “I think I hear people.”

Before I had reached my Lord the captain repeated this, and excitedly begged the duke, I believe, to fly.  Chartersea hissed out that he would not move a step until he had finished me, and as I bent over the body his point popped through my coat, and the pain shot under my shoulder.  I staggered, and fell.  A second of silence ensued, when the duke said with a laugh that was a cackle: 

“He won’t marry her, d—­n him!” (panting).  “He had me cursed near killed, Lewis.  Best give him another for luck.”

I felt his heavy hand on the sword, and it tearing out of me.  Next came the single word “Dover,” and they were gone.  I had not lost my senses, and was on my knees again immediately, ripping open Comyn’s waistcoat with my left hand, and murmuring his name in an agony of sorrow.  I was searching under his shirt, wet with blood, when I became aware of voices at my side.  “A duel!  A murder!  Call the warders!  Warders, ho!”

“A surgeon!” I cried.  “A surgeon first of all!”

Some one had wrenched a lamp from the Grand Walk and held it, flickering in the wind, before his Lordship’s face.  Guided by its light, more people came running through the wood, then the warders with lanthorns, headed by Mr. Tyers, and on top of him Mr. Fitzpatrick and my Lord Carlisle.  We carried poor Jack to the house at the gate, and closed the doors against the crowd.

By the grace of Heaven Sir Charles Blicke was walking in the gardens that night, and, battering at the door, was admitted along with the constable and the watch.  Assisted by a young apothecary, Sir Charles washed and dressed the wound, which was in the left groin, and to our anxious questions replied that there was a chance of recovery.

“But you, too, are hurt, sir,” he said, turning his clear eyes upon me.  Indeed, the blood had been dripping from my hand and arm during the whole of the operation, and I began to be weak from the loss of it.  By great good fortune Chartersea’s thrust, which he thought had ended my life, passed under my armpit from behind and, stitching the skin, lodged deep in my right nipple.  This wound the surgeon bound carefully, and likewise two smaller ones.