"Now, sir," came the courteous voice, "I am ready." Something in the proud grace of bearing, the reckless contempt, made Roshan follow suit. "The sun will be in your eyes," he said, "let us fight lengthwise to the ridge." "We _will_--by and by!" came that icy voice, as the speaker, without moving, stood on guard. "We can omit the salute. If you are ready, I am." For an instant Roshan hesitated, realizing what the life that he meant to take had been, what the man himself whom he meant to kill had been and was. The man whose figure stood out like a black shadow against the distant blue of the hills; and as he realized the fine fibre of his enemy, a sense of powerlessness to touch, to harm him, kept Roshan motionless. "Shall I count five, and give you a start?" The question came with a shrug of the shoulders. The taunt told. Roshan pulled himself together, and stood on guard also. But the sense of powerlessness was intolerable; he lowered his rapier for a word more--a word to raise his own self-esteem. "I warn you," he said haughtily, "that the sun is in your eyes. That I have learnt more than you ever taught me--that _this_ is to the death." "It could scarcely be anything else, could it?" came the instant reply, in a voice that vibrated harshly, like a harpstring struck to its fullest, "with a dead woman between us! Engage, you devil, or I will kill you as you stand!" Roshan gave a short, sharp cry, like a wild beast. The next instant the curious hiss of two meeting blades sliding along each other was the only sound. It is a strange sound, which, to the listeners, the onlookers, seems to say "hush" to the whole world. "_Hush_--hush--_sh_--_sh_." Then, short and sharp as that cry of Roshan's, came another sound; the beaten, baffled clash when steel meets steel instead of flesh. Roshan, with an inward curse, gripped his rapier closer. He had almost been disarmed,--disarmed in that first encounter. Strange that he should have forgotten his foe,--forgotten the deadly insistence of the master's blade, slack as a snake in curves, firm as a vice in grip. Then that almost invisible turn of the wrist which had so nearly done for him. He had forgotten--these, in years of meaner adversaries. He remembered them now, and would not forget again. And he had such things; ay! and more, in reserve for himself. So had his master; in reserve for both of them, if needful. And the knowledge that it _would_ be needful came to Ninian Bruce at the first touch of his adversary's sword; for there was that in it which told the old hand that the young one was a master's also. "My pupil has improved," he said quietly, as, abandoning the attack, he parried Roshan's furious onslaught with scarcely a motion of the hand, held level to his heart. That he could do. But the other must surely come in the end, since he was old, and Roshan young. If in the end, therefore, why not now? The sooner the better.