"My man will kill yours this time," said he, quietly, to Neville's second; "I can see if in his eye. He is hungry: t' other has had his bellyful."
Once more the men were armed, and the seconds withdrew to their places, intimating that this was the last shot they would allow under any circumstances whatever.
"Are you both ready?"
{"Yes."
{
{"Yes."
A faint wail seemed to echo the response.
All heard it, and in that superstitious age believed it to be some mysterious herald of death.
It suspended even Major Rickards's voice a minute. He recovered himself, however, and once more his soldier-like tones rang in the keen air:—
"One,——"
There was a great rushing, and a pounding of the hard ground, and a scarlet Amazon galloped in, and drew up in the middle, right between the levelled pistols.
Every eye had been so bent on the combatants, that Kate Peyton and her horse seemed to have sprung out of the very earth. And there she sat, pale as ashes, on the steaming piebald, and glanced from pistol to pistol.