Perhaps a hobby hardens
with age; and my hobby has been silence. Perhaps I feel that I have
killed my mother's brother, but I have saved my mother's name.
Anyhow, I chose a time when I knew you were all asleep, and he was
walking alone in the garden. I saw all the stone statues standing in
the moonlight; and I myself was like one of those stone statues
walking. In a voice that was not my own, I told him of his treason
and demanded the papers; and when he refused, I forced him to take
one of the two swords. The swords were among some specimens sent
down here for the Prime Minister's inspection; he is a collector,
you know; they were the only equal weapons I could find. To cut an
ugly tale short, we fought there on the path in front of the
Britannia statue; he was a man of great strength, but I had somewhat
the advantage in skill. His sword grazed my forehead almost at the
moment when mine sank into the joint in his neck. He fell against
the statue, like Caesar against Pompey's, hanging on to the iron
rail; his sword was already broken. When I saw the blood from that
deadly wound, everything else went from me; I dropped my sword and
ran as if to lift him up. As I bent toward him something happened
too quick for me to follow. I do not know whether the iron bar was
rotted with rust and came away in his hand, or whether he rent it
out of the rock with his apelike strength; but the thing was in his
hand, and with his dying energies he swung it over my head, as I
knelt there unarmed beside him.
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