Meanwhile M. de Strasbourg turned on the unfortunate coachman.
'Get down, you rascal,' he cried; 'you have been bribed, you're in the fellow's pay. Get down! Not a farthing will you get from me, but only a thrashing that will make your bones ache this month to come.'
'Your honour,' replied the coachman piteously, 'it was not my fault. He offered to kill me unless I drove you here.'
M. de Strasbourg in a rage flung back to Kelly. He clapped a hand on his shoulder and plucked him from the carriage door.
'So you offered to kill him, did you?' he said. 'Perhaps you will make a like offer to me. But I'll not wait for the offer.'
He unclasped his cloak, drew his sword (happily not his axe) and delivered his thrust with that rapidity it seemed all one motion. Mr. Kelly jumped on one side, and the sword just gleamed against his sleeve. M. de Strasbourg overbalanced himself and stumbled a foot or two forwards. Kelly had whipped out his sword by the time that M. de Strasbourg had recovered, and a battle began which was whimsical enough. A quiet narrow street, misty with the grey morning, the carriage lamps throwing here a doubtful shadow, a masked headsman leaping, swearing, thrusting in an extreme passion, and, to crown the business, the coachman lamenting on the box that whichever honourable gentleman was killed he would most surely go wanting his hire, he that had a woeful starving family! Mr. Kelly, indeed, felt the strongest inclination to laugh, but dared not, so hotly was he pressed. The attack, however, he did not return, but contented himself with parrying the thrusts. His design, indeed, reached at no more than the mere disarming of M. de Strasbourg. M. de Strasbourg, however, lost even his last remnants of patience.
'Rascal!' he cried. 'Scullion! Grasshopper!'
Then he threw his hat at Kelly and missed, and at last flung his periwig full in Kelly's face, accompanying the present with a thrust home which his opponent barely parried.
It was this particular action which brought the contest to a grotesque conclusion quite in keeping with its beginnings. For the periwig tumbled in the mud, and the coachman, assured that he would get no stiver of his hire, scrambled down from his box, rushed at a prize of so many pounds in value, picked it up and took to his heels.
M. de Strasbourg uttered a cry and leaped backwards out of reach.