By Right of Sword

o my rooms and sat down to think out seriously and in de

a few minutes or hours: but it was quite another to take up his life where he had dropped it and play the part day by day and week after week. There must be a thousand thread

etween the real Alexis and myself was strictly limited to physical qualities. A freak of nature had made us counterparts of one another in size, look, complexion, voice, a

eer. I was the despair first of the Russian schoolmasters for over ten years, and next of all the English tutors who took me in hand during the next ten. I went to a large English school, and was expelled, after a hundred scrapes, because I learnt nothing. I tried to cram for Oxford, but never could get through S

e the revolver like a trickster and shoot to a hair's breadth; while with either broadsword or rapier I could beat the fencing master all over the school. However, I was beaten by the examiners and my couple of years' work succeeded only in giving my muscles the hardness of steel and flexi

marked me out for special petty illtreatment. It came to a climax one day when a couple of dozen of us were sent off on a train journey. I left on the platform some bit of the gear. He noticed it and bringing it to the carriage window, flung it in at me and, with a sneer and a big coarse oath, cried:-"D'ye think I'm here to wet-nurse you, you damnation great baby?" And he waited a moment with the sneer still on his face: and he didn't wait in vain, either. Forgetting all ab

in having wasted my life, and filled the air with vows that I would set to work to increase my income of ￡250 a year to an amount such as would let me give her a home worthy of her. She loved me. I know

e. Everything I'd ever really wanted, I'd always failed to get. I was like a lunatic;

eel I was in deadly earnest; but she made no scene, such as another woman might. Her white beauty held my hand an instant, and in that time her husband, Sir Philip, came up. Then I had a flash of genius. I knew he was as jealous as a man could be and as he had known nothing of my relations with Edith, like many another self-sufficient idiot, he imagined she had loved him and no one else. I opened his eyes that night. Keeping him in control with the pist

art ready for any devilment that might offer, when my fate was tossed topsy-turvy into a cauldron of welcome dangers,

ot mean more than death; while there were possibilities in it which might have very different results. War with Turkey

diers: but men sometimes reform suddenly, and the new Alexis would be cast in a quite different mould. The

duct which would be not altogether inconsistent with some such mental disturbance. I would be moody, silent, reserved, and yet subject to gusts and fits of uncontrollable passion and anger: desperate in all matters touching courage, and contemptuously intolerant of any kind of interference. I knew that my skill with the sword and p

pportunity of s

eutenant Essaieff, came to see me. He was immensely surprised at the change in my

hat tone of contempt with which one speaks to a

ds held me ch

please," said I, very sternly, ey

t. Or is it one of the she-devils, eh? You know plenty of those. Let's have the tale." He laughed again; but the mirth w

. "Save for a miracle, I should now be a dead man. T

ow and asked:-"H

of me, and yet contriving to watch him as he eyed me fu

etrovitch?" he

complete inconsequence I added:-"I was praying, and in answer a light flashed on me and would have co

when you've a lot of arrears t

ed at him coldly

this business to-morrow morning, but that gives you no title to insult me. Af

so earnestly that I half thought he

short in a manner that shewed me how angry he was and how much he despised me. "I'm only so

But I would soon change all that, I thought, as I set to work to examine all the papers and possessions in the rooms. I was engaged in this work when my other second

illed me with ins

u're in a devil of a funny mood, and thinks you're about out of your mind with

d half my hair burnt off and shaved the other half." He started at my su

e a devil of a difference in your looks, I must say. And in your ma

t to allow that bully's sword to t

ou that wrinkle with the foils-and that was certainl

shortly. "I've played the fool long enough too, and I m

il d'ye mean?

ke, I call it. Every first-rank swo

candle to me. And I would not stand before Devinsky's w

he sword across the face dir

things in order, instead of talking this sort of swaggering rubbish to keep your courage up. You know jolly well that Devin

prayer," said I: and my visito

ne together, old man, you'll

we had had together. I let him talk freely as it was part of my education, and he rattled on about such a number of shameful things that I was disgust

bout the rooms with an assumption of insufferable insolence. Whenever I found a man looking askance at me-and this was frequent enough-I picked him out for some special insult. I spoke freely of the "miracle" that had happened to me, and the change that had b

id another; while a number of others held to Essaieff's view-that I was beside myself with fear, or drink, or both combined. I placed myself at the disp

stroke a new part for Alexis Petrovitch: and prepared everyone to expect and think noth

to overhaul the place for papers, and to learn