'Then learn,' said I, 'that I was master of myself; that I am now; that you insulted me grossly; that the only words I have for you are—draw, sir, draw!'
'Stop!' he cried, as I drew my sword; 'pray come back with me to the camp. You are ill; pray, come back; I have no quarrel with you, believe me.'
But I struck him on the breast with my swordhilt, so that he nearly fell. Then he recovered himself, and, still crying out that he had no quarrel with me, drew and stood upon his guard, while I rushed upon him.
He was cool, and I furious. I believe he could have killed me easily if he had wished, but he only parried my rapid blows. At last, however, as I pressed him more closely, he grew paler, and began to fight in earnest. What then could he do against a madman? I bore him back, step by step, till a mass of rock stopped him; and there I kept him, with the hissing steel playing about his head, until he dropped upon one knee and his sword fell from his hand. Then I paused, waiting to see him die as I would a wounded hare, as die I knew he must, for I had pierced him with twenty wounds. He knelt thus, and looked, not at me, but at the setting sun; and then his head drooped and he rolled over, and was dead.
And as I wiped my sword on the grass, I shouted with glee.
Of course, I told no one. It was but another secret added to the many that had torn my heart and brain. Nor, when the body was found, stripped by camp followers, and supposed to be killed by a reconnoitring party of the enemy, did I betray myself by word or look.
At last the war was over, and we were ordered home. I bade farewell to the blue hills of the Crimea with secret joy, and as the shore faded from my sight, the memory of all that had happened to me during the Great Siege faded from my memory like a dream.
Upon our landing, I went as soon as possible home. How green the hedges were, how sweet the scent of the violets, how soft the grass, how grand the arching oaks and giant elms, as I journeyed along on foot. Surely I have suffered enough, I said to myself, as I passed through meadow, and copse, and lane, and over stiles, and to the old park at last. Surely I have suffered enough, I said, as I came to the lodge gate, where the keeper's wife looked curiously at my uniform and bronzed face, and the crape on my arm, and then ran into the lodge to tell her husband that here was Master Horace come back. Surely there was peace in that old house, with its pointed gables, and moss-clad turrets, and ivied walls, and little gothic windows—where the old butler grasped my hand; and the maids came peeping out; and the old dog licked my face; where poor Lucy wept upon my breast—wept for that I had come back alone; and then put her little girl into my arms, to kiss dear Uncle Horace, come home once more.
But, when I went to bed that night, in the same glass that showed me my Enemy years before, I saw him looking at me, with his cruel smile, shining out of my own eyes.
What more remains to be told? But little; for it was but the old story. It is enough to say that I struggled on, hoping against hope; that I cheated myself with the maddest hope of all—that she might be brought to love me; that I one day prayed her to become my wife, and that she broke from me with terror and loathing; that I fled her presence, and was once more a wanderer over the earth; that my weary feet dragged me over the snows of Siberia, where the furred noble and the chained serf worked side by side; over the burning sands, where the brown Arab careers along upon his steed, his white burnous fluttering in the hot wind; over the broad prairies of America, where the Indian prowls with his trusty rifle, waiting for the wild beast; over the paths of the trackless deep; over the still wilder deserts and still more lonely deeps of revelry and vice;—what more than that I have come back again; that many guests are here to do honor to my return; that these are the last words which I shall ever write!