wear a halo and remain the devil."
While the abbé spoke, some heavy clouds, which had gathered over the heights, darkening the night, began to discharge themselves in rain, which presently lashed in so heavy a torrent that the pine torches were extinguished, and the men holding the lanterns had much difficulty to maintain the feeble flames. La Salle, with his back to the storm, drove the Hollander before him through the hissing rain, the people falling away as the duellists advanced, their blades gleaming and grating through the silvery lines of water. A muffled shout went up. Van Vuren had been palpably hit upon the shoulder. La Salle smiled grimly and still pressed on, lunging repeatedly over the captain's guard, taking every risk of a wound as he hastened to make his victory sure.
Roussilac cleared the road, the people only obeying when the soldiers prepared to enforce their officer's order.
"Gentlemen," cried the commandant, advancing, with an imprecation upon the rain, "drop your swords, I pray of you."
"The devil seize you!" shouted La Salle, throwing out his left arm. "His point was not an inch from me."
"Put up your swords," repeated Roussilac, boldly disregarding the remonstrance. "Sir priest, it is the will of the Cardinal."
These were potent words, and for one moment the abbé hesitated. He lowered his point with an angry side glance upon his interrupter, and the affair would then have finished had not a dark figure stopped out from the shadow under the cliff, and thrown itself into position with the muffled warning, "En garde!"
"Ah, dog!" cried La Salle, starting forward through the rain with scarcely a ray of light between him and his adversary.
When a line of lightning broke the sky, an exclamation burst from his lips and his bold cheek blanched. During that momentary illumination La Salle beheld his enemy clearly. He saw a mean man clad in a suit of faded red with torn and stained ruffles; his hair gathered behind and tied with a piece of grass; his hat broken out of shape and adorned sadly with half a plume. And when Laroche held up a lantern, the fighting priest saw further that what he had taken for a negroid skin was merely a mask which covered the stranger's face, slit with holes for the eyes and mouth.
"This," muttered La Salle, cold with terror as he warded off an attack which was far more aggressive than that of Van Vuren, "this is the work of Satan."
Roussilac touched D'Archand, pointing along the path which bent down to the river, and whispered, "Wait for the lightning."
When the flash passed, the master saw the big figure of the Dutchman hurrying to reach his ship, his sword still drawn in his hand.
"Then, who is this?" exclaimed D'Archand, with a frightened oath, indicating through the beating rain the man behind the mask.
Roussilac signed himself, and said nothing.
Laroche hurried up, his big face streaming, the lantern shaking in his hands like a will-o'-the-wisp, his attitude grotesque with terror.
"What witchcraft is here?" he shouted. "See you how this Dutchman has changed body and appearance as well as name?"
"Van Vuren is not here," said Roussilac gravely. "He ran when the abbé lowered his sword; and so soon as he had gone – nay, before – yonder figure stepped out of the darkness under the cliff and challenged La Salle. You see he has covered his face. It is the mad Englishman who fights for the love of fighting. And the English cover the earth like flies."
"I shall stiffen his arm, be he heretic or devil," said the stout priest; and he went and stood near the duellists, and, boldly facing the stranger, cursed him prolifically in the name of Holy Church and the King of Rome.
The stranger did not turn, and only acknowledged the anathemas by a perfectly distinct laugh which issued weirdly from the mask.
No man had ever called La Salle's bravery in question. Facing an enemy, who had started as it were from the rocks before him in the rain and the lightning, he met the resolute attack and parried every lunge. In truth, the priest was a fine swordsman; but his resource in skirmish and detail was here taxed to the uttermost. All he could do at his best was to hold out the short sword, which flashed in and out of the rain, controlled by a wrist of steel and an iron arm. The masked man gave forth no sound of hard breathing. He was a master of swordcraft, and La Salle knew that he had met his match. Here was no nervous Dutchman to be trifled with; no hectoring soldier with a hearty oath and bluff swagger. La Salle sweated, and his breath came pricking in hot gasps, and a cold thrill trickled along his back when he allowed himself to wonder who the enemy might be.
The stranger guarded against treachery, hugging the cliff lest anyone with hostile intentions might pass behind and reach his back. Had he moved out, he would assuredly have beaten down the abbé's defence; as it was, the latter was acting upon the defensive, and doing so with much difficulty.
The rain stopped on an instant. As suddenly the clouds fell back to admit the light; and the rugged shadows of the rocks traced fantastic shapes along the Rue des Pêcheurs.
The strained voice of Laroche broke the stillness.
"A touch!"
"Liar!" shouted back the hard-driven but proud priest, although he felt warm blood oozing between his fingers.
The masked man feared the light which followed the sweeping away of the storm clouds. He bestirred himself, feinted with amazing rapidity within and without the pass, then his limber wrist stiffened for the second, and his point darted in like a poisonous snake over the hilt and wounded La Salle upon the muscle of the sword-arm.
"A touch!" shouted the captains together, both too excited to have any thought for the law.
"An accident," gasped the proud priest. "A misfortune."
"Well, here's a touch!" called a deep English voice; and as the challenger made his nationality known he lunged beneath the abbé's blade, thrusting out until the blood spurted upward in a jet.
"Yes, yes. A touch – I confess," panted La Salle; and he staggered back, crossed his legs, and fell heavily.
"By St. Michael!" shouted the fat Laroche, furiously pulling out his sword and reaching towards the shadow under the cliff. "You shall pay, assassin, for this."
The mysterious stranger chuckled, disarmed Laroche in a moment, scratching the stout abbé's wrist with his point, and before the two officers and the handful of soldiers could bestir themselves, he had disappeared round the bend of the Rue des Pêcheurs. Roussilac ran to the ending of the way, but found no sign of the masked man, who had vanished as mysteriously as he had arrived.
CHAPTER III
CHRISMATION
The day following the duel La Salle was under the hands of the surgeon – who, in the ignorance of that age, treated his patient for loss of blood by letting yet more – and Roussilac was sending forth men with the charge to find the hiding-place of the Englishman, and to fail not at their peril. However, they did at that time fail. Not even the cunning hunchback Gaudriole had been able to discover the habitation of the mysterious swordsman who had dared to enter the fortress and openly defy its officers and men.
Even the Indian might have walked behind the scrub of tangled willow-growth over the cave-dwelling, and known nothing of it, had his eyes or his nose failed to discern the thread of wood-smoke often curling above the blackened crater of a hollow tree which had been ingeniously converted into a chimney. A grass-covered knoll made the roof of the dwelling, the entrance to which only became apparent from a stone causeway, shelving gradually between the roots of pine trees, and enclosed by massive logs which banked the eastern front of the burrow.
Upon the threshold of this rude home a brown boy was playing with a wolf-hound, while awaiting his father's return from that daring visit to the fortress.
Around him Nature thundered like a great organ. The leaden waters of the great discharge roared where the bush made a screen which no eyes could pierce; the falls of the Ouiataniche smoked below. Spray flew above the scrub, bathing the dog's fur and the strong arms of the child. The one bayed, the other shouted, to the hard north wind that swept overhead, lashing the branches, tearing the summits of the pines, snatching the dry wisps of grass and whirling them