"A target," he said to himself, "a mark. I will take him on that spot."
And, henceforth, his eye never left that mark, and his rapier's point sought it alone. Suddenly he thought he had found it! Nerved to desperation, De Bois-Vallée thrust in tierce, disengaged, and thrust again, and a moment afterwards, with a hoarse cry, staggered forward against Andrew, letting his weapon fall to the ground, and clutching at the grass with his hands as he dropped face downwards.
"Humph!" said Andrew, bending over him, after plucking a long wisp of grass from a tussock growing near, and wiping his rapier with it. "I have missed after all. It will have to be done over again." And as he rolled his late opponent on to his back, he muttered, "My eyes are failing me, or is't the evening light? I could have sworn I was through his heart, and I have but taken him in the shoulder. The hilt of my sword banging up against him has hurt him as much as the passage of the sword itself. Yet, 'twas a good blow, too! Clean through bone and muscle from point to haft."
"This will not kill him," he reflected, almost savagely for him, as he loosened his enemy's lace neckerchief, "though the night air may--if I leave him here. If--I leave him here!" And, as he so thought, he knew he could not do that--could not leave him there to bleed to death, or stiffen in the night dews.
"I must fetch someone," he reflected, "even some of these poor boors whom we have desolated, and send him back to quarters. I have a gold piece or two--they will serve."
And full of this resolve he turned to leave the glade and seek for assistance. Yet, ere he went, he threw the wounded man's rich laced coat over him, leaving his face free so that he might inhale the air, and bent over him to make sure that he was not in truth dead. Doing so, he saw that the eyes were open, staring up to the heavens, but with no glassiness about them, and that his lips moved. Moved and uttered something, too; something that seemed like the word "Marion."
"Ay, Marion," repeated Andrew. "Marion. After you, I have next to make my account with her. But how? How to do that? 'Twill be the harder task."
[CHAPTER IX.]
THE FURY OF DESPAIR.
He went swiftly towards the end of the glade, bent on finding some assistance for his enemy ere night was full upon him--for now there was little daylight left. Yet, as he did so, he paused in the great strides he was taking--paused, and looked back.