"I may not accept it," said MacLean, with dry lips. "That letter, also,
is useless to me. I would you were all villain."

"Your scruple is fantastic!" retorted the other, and as he spoke he put
both papers upon the escritoire, weighting them with the sandbox. "You
shall take them hence when our score is settled,--ay, and use them as best
you may! Now, sir, are you ready?"

"You are weak from illness," said MacLean hoarsely, "Let the quarrel rest
until you have recovered strength."

Haward laughed. "I was not strong yesterday," he said. "But Mr. Everard is
pinked in the side, and Mr. Travis, who would fight with pistols, hath a
ball through his shoulder."

The storekeeper started. "I have heard of those gentlemen! You fought them
both upon the day when you left your sickroom?"

"Assuredly," answered the other, with a slight lift of his brows. "Will
you be so good as to move the table to one side? So. On guard, sir!"

The man who had been ill unto death and the man who for many years had
worn no sword acquitted themselves well. Had the room been a field behind
Montagu House, had there been present seconds, a physician, gaping
chairmen, the interest would have been breathless. As it was, the lady
upon the wall smiled on, with her eyes forever upon the blossoms in her
hand, and the river without, when it could be heard through the clashing
of steel, made but a listless and dreamy sound. Each swordsman knew that
he had provoked a friend to whom his debt was great, but each, according