Suddenly, as I pressed him, he shifted ground, and there was Lewis standing within range of my eye.  His hands were nowhere—­they were behind his back!  God alone knows why he had not murdered me.  To keep Chartersea between him and me I swung another quarter.  The duke seemed to see my game, struggled against it, tried to rush in under my guard, made a vicious lunge that would have ended me then and there had he not slipped.  We were both panting like wild beasts.  When next I raised my eyes Lewis had faded into the darkness.  Then I felt my head as wet as from a plunge, the water running on my brow, and my back twitching.  Every second I thought the sting of his sword was between my ribs.  But to forsake the duke would have been the maddest of follies.

In that moment of agony came footsteps beating on the path, and by tacit consent our swords were still.  We listened.

“Richard!  Richard Carvel!”

For the second time in my life I thanked Heaven for that brave and loyal English heart.  I called back, but my throat was dry and choked.

“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!”