“With me, Senor? I waive that, I tell you—I, Jose Santa Maria Sebastian Sant Iago Nuñez Ramiro de Guzman, de la Mancha, Marques de las Alpuxarras, Conde del Pulgar, a peer of Castile, am ready to waive my rank and fight a scrambled skunk! Draw! Stand back! At the word three I fire—one—two—Sangre de Cristo!” Sarde had fired. “What the deuce do you mean by firing before I give the word, eh? I’ll punch your head for that!” The Blackguard clutched at a burning pain on his shoulder, his hand was dyed with the blood of a spurting artery—and yet this seemed to concern him less than the red glare from within the fort which had flushed the face of his adversary. He reeled backwards now, staring up at the stockade, whose timbers loomed black against a fiery glow, which was rapidly mounting to heaven above Fort Carlton. “Sarde,” said la Mancha, gravely, “you see that?” “Had enough?” asked Sarde; “I’m going to kill you now. I fire when I count three—one—two—defend yourself—” “Presently, my good man, presently,” la Mancha waved his hand to Sarde. “Don’t you see that the fort is on fire?” “On fire—what? On fire! By the living—” “Hush, don’t gabble, Sarde. You’ve played the man at last; I forgive you for firing too soon—I let you off the charge of cowardice in the field. Oh, you needn’t thank me—it’s for your wife’s sake. Yes, I let you off—I ask your pardon, sir. Oh, yes, why not?” Within the fort a bugle was crying the terrible monotonous repetitions of the General Assembly, and men were yelling, as they ran, of wounded patients shut up in the blazing house. “The fort’s on fire. The fort’s on fire,” Sarde moaned. La Mancha clutched Sarde’s arm to steady himself as he reeled backwards faint with pain from his wound. “Those refugees,” he explained; “half-breeds in the guard room with a red hot stove. I warned them. Look, the gate house is on fire, the gate is blocked with flames, the only gate, and the fire will spread all round the buildings! All those people going to be burned to death unless we can cut a road through the stockade—you’ve hit my shoulder—I can’t use the axe. But you”—he shook the officer with frantic violence—“a Canadian, a born axeman— Do you hear? Save the garrison or they’ll burn to death! Take that axe!” The Canadian sprang forward, the axe became a live thing in his hands; the gleaming blade flamed in red air, buried itself in quivering timber, then swung again, and lit, and swung again in a whirl of splinters. La Mancha sat down in the snow, his blood-drenched hand upon the wound, his body rocking to the steady swing of the axe, though he could hardly see his enemy now, because of the red smoke curling between the timbers. “Good man!” he gasped, “you are a man at last! You’ll save the garrison, you’ll get promoted, you’ll win back that lady’s love-you’re winning back your honor! Strike, man—strike!” * * * * *