"Go home to heaven,
dickey-bird."
Between phrases of this kind we cut and thrust for life, an odd
sort of fighting. I fought with a desperate alertness, and
presently my sword passed through his body, drew out, and he
shivered--fell--where he stood, collapsing suddenly like a bag. I
knelt beside him, and lifted up his head. His eyes were glazing
fast.
"Gabord! Gabord!" I called, grief-stricken, for that work was
the worst I ever did in this world.
He started, stared, and fumbled at his waistcoat. I quickly put
my hand in, and drew out--one of Mathilde's wooden crosses.
"To cheat--the devil--yet--aho!" he whispered, kissed the cross,
and so was done with life.
When I turned from him, Clark stood beside me. Dazed as I was, I
did not at first grasp the significance of that fact. I looked
towards the town, and saw the French army hustling into the St.
Louis Gate; saw the Highlanders charging the bushes at the
Cote Ste. Genevieve, where the brave Canadians made their last
stand; saw, not fifty feet away, the noblest soldier of our time,
even General Wolfe, dead in the arms of Mr. Henderson, a volunteer
in the Twenty-Second; and then, almost at my feet, stretched out
as I had seen him lie in the Palace courtyard two years before,
Juste Duvarney.
But now he was beyond all friendship or
reconciliation--forever.
XXIX
"MASTER DEVIL" DOLTAIRE
The bells of some shattered church were calling to vespers, the
sun was sinking behind the flaming autumn woods, as once more I
entered the St.
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