“Sabres? excellent! Severn’s love is the foil. There are some men, Blake, who can never take kindly to sabre play, just as some men would rather be slashed than pinked through the liver. Sabres: excellent!”
He walked up and down, limping slightly, from an old wound that he had got at Fontenoy.
“Where do we meet, lad?”
“In the little meadow behind the fir plantation above Gaymer’s farm.”
“At six?”
“At six. I take the sabres. Severn has his choice. A friend is to second him.”
“I know that friend of his. A little brown beast of a French fencing-master. Sabres: excellent! Look you, lad, speed is the great thing against a man like Severn. Go at it, like a cavalry charge. I have known good swordsmen knocked over by mere slashing boys in a cavalry charge. It is no use playing the cunning game with Royce Severn.”
“Thank you, sir. I am out to kill him in the first thirty seconds. I know something about sabres.”
The colonel came and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Blake, you had better sleep here. Go up and get those sabres now it is dark.”