the steps, sprang to the top of them, and turned about, just as Mr. Scrope reached the bottom.
'Wait a bit, my friend!' said Wogan.
'Let me go, if you please,' said Mr. Scrope, mounting the lowest step.
'You and I must have a little talk first.'
'It will be talk of a kind uncommon disagreeable to you,' said Mr. Scrope hotly, and he mounted the second step.
Wogan laughed gleefully.
'Why, that's just the way I would have you speak,' said he. Mr. Scrope stopped, looked over Wogan from head to foot, and then glanced past him up the avenue.
'I have no quarrel with you, Mr. Wogan,' he said politely, and took the third step.
'And have you not?' asked Wogan. 'I'm thinking, on the contrary, that you took exception to my poetry.'
'Was the poetry yours? Indeed, I did not guess that,' he replied. 'But the greatest of men may yet be poor poets.'
'In this case you're mightily mistaken,' cried Wogan, and he stamped his foot and threw out his chest. 'I am my poetry.'
Mr. Scrope squinted up the avenue under Wogan's arm.
'Damn!' said he.
Wogan turned round; Parson Kelly and her ladyship were just passing through the window into the house. Wogan laughed, but a trifle too soon. For as he still stood turned away and looking down the avenue, Mr. Scrope took the last three steps at a bound, and sprang past him. Luckily as he sprang he hit against Wogan's shoulder, and so swung him round the quicker. Wogan just caught the man's elbow, jerked him back, got both his arms coiled about his body, lifted him off his feet, and flattened him up against his chest. Mr. Scrope struggled against the pressure; he was lithe and slippery like a fish, and his muscles gave and tightened like a steel spring. Wogan gripped him the closer, pinioning his arms to his side. In a little Scrope began to pant, and a little after to perspire; then the veins ridged upon his face, and his eyes opened and shut convulsively.
'Have you had enough, do you think?' asked Wogan; 'or shall I fall on you? But you may take my word for it, whatever you think of my love-poems, that I never yet fell on any man but something broke inside of him.'
Mr. Scrope was not in that condition which would enable him to articulate, but he seemed to gasp an assent, and Wogan put him down. He staggered backwards towards the house for a yard or two, leaned against one of the trees, and then, taking out his handkerchief, wiped his forehead; at the same time he walked towards the house, but with the manner of a man who is dizzy, and knows nothing of his direction.
'Stop!' cried Wogan.
Scrope stooped, and turned back carelessly, as though he had not heard the command. Indeed, he seemed even to have forgotten why he was out of breath.
'Mr. Wogan,' he said, 'I do not quite understand. It seems you write love-poems to her ladyship, and yet encourage the Parson to court her.'
Wogan was not to be drawn into any explanation.
'Let us leave her ladyship entirely out of the question. There's the value of my poetry to be argued out.'
Mr. Scrope bowed, and they walked down the steps side by side, and through the opening in the hedge. A path led through the trees, and they followed it until they came to an open space of sward. Wogan measured it across with his stride.
'A very fitting place for the argument, I think,' he said, and took off his coat.
'What? In Smilinda's garden?' asked Scrope easily. 'Within view of Smilinda's windows? Surely the common road would be the more convenient place.'
'Why, and that's true,' answered Wogan. 'It would have been an outrage.'
'No,' said Scrope, 'merely a flaw in the argument. This is the nearest way. At least, I think so,' and he turned off at an angle, passed through a shrubbery, and came out opposite a little postern-gate in the garden-wall.
'You know the grounds well,' said Wogan.
'It is my first visit,' replied Scrope, with a trace of bitterness, 'but I have been told enough of them to know my way.'
He stepped forward and opened the gate. Outside in the road stood a travelling chaise with a pair of horses harnessed to it.
'There is no one within view,' said Wogan. The road ran to right and left empty as far as the eye could reach; in front stretched the empty fields.
'No one,' said Mr. Scrope, and he looked up to the sky.
'Well, I would as lief take my last look at the sunlight as at anything else, and I doubt not it is the same with you.'
Wogan, in spite of himself, began to entertain a certain liking for the man. He had accepted each stroke of ill-fortune—his discomfiture at Lady Oxford's hands, the grapple on the steps, and now this duel—without disputation. Moreover Wogan was wondering whether or no the man had some real grievance against her ladyship and what motive brought him, in what expectation, in his chaise to Brampton Bryan. He felt indeed a certain compunction for his behaviour, and he said doubtfully,
'Mr. Scrope, you and I might have been very good friends in other circumstances.'
'I doubt it very much, Mr. Wogan.' Scrope shook his head and smiled. 'Your poetry would always have come between us. I would really sooner die than praise it.'
He looked up and down the road as he spoke, and then made an almost imperceptible nod at his coachman.
'That field opposite will do, I think,' Scrope said, and advanced from the doorway to the side of his chaise as though he was looking for something. It was certainly not his sword; Wogan now thinks it was his pistols. Wogan felt his liking increase and was inclined to put the encounter off for a little. It was for this reason that he stepped forward and passed an arm through Scrope's just as the latter had set a foot on the step of the chaise, no doubt to search the better for what he needed.
'Now what's amiss with the poem?' asked Wogan in a friendly way.
'It is altogether too inconsequent,' replied Scrope with a sudden irritation for which Wogan was at a loss to account.
'But my dear man,' said he, 'it was not intended for a syllogism.'
Scrope took his foot off the step and turned to Wogan as though a new thought had sprung into his brain.
'Mr. Wogan,' he said, 'I shall have all the pleasure imaginable in pointing out the faults to you if you care to listen and have the leisure. Then if you kill me afterwards, why I shall have done you some slight service and perhaps the world a greater. If I kill you, on the other hand, why there's so much time wasted, it is true, but I am in no hurry.'
There was no escape from the duel; that Wogan knew. Mr. Scrope had insulted the Parson, Lady Oxford, and himself; he was aware besides that the Parson and Wogan, both of them at the best suspected characters, were visiting the Earl of Oxford; and he had, whether it was justified or no, a hot resentment against the Parson. He might, since he knew so much, know also more, as, for instance, the names under which the Parson and Wogan were hiding themselves. It would not in any case need a very shrewd guess to hit upon their business, and if Mr. Scrope got back safe to London, why he might make himself confoundedly unpleasant. Wogan ran through these arguments in his mind, and was brought to the conclusion that he must most infallibly kill Mr. Scrope; but at the same time a little of his company meanwhile could do no harm.
'Nor I,' replied Wogan accordingly. 'I shall be delighted to confute your opinions.'
Mr. Scrope bowed; it seemed as though his face lighted up for a moment.
'There is no reason why we should stand in the road,' he said, 'when we can sit in the chaise.'
'Very true,' answered Wogan.
Scrope mounted into the chaise. Wogan followed upon his heels. They sat down side by side, and Scrope pulled out the verses from his pocket. He read the dedication once more:
'Strephon to Smilinda running barefoot