"Your flint looks a trifle loose, sir," said he softly, "Suffer me!"
I relinquished the weapon with a murmur of thanks and stood again
absorbed until I felt the pistol thrust into my grasp and heard a loud
voice speaking.
"Pray attention, gentlemen! Take notice, the word will be
'one--two--'"
The loud voice faltered suddenly, was lost in the trampling of horse's
hoofs and into the grassy level between Devereux and myself rode my
uncle Jervas with my uncle George close behind.
My uncle Jervas reined in his horse and sat glancing serenely round
about him, his lips curling in his bleak, sardonic smile, his
prominent chin something more aggressive than usual.
"Ah, gentlemen," said he gently. "Your humble servant, I bid you good
morning. Sir Geoffrey Devereux, we are very well met--at last. This is
a pleasure I much desired when--we were younger, as you will doubtless
remember, but I imagined, until very recently, that you were dead,
sir, and damned, and necessarily out of my reach. You have hidden
yourself surpassingly well, sir."
Very deliberately my uncle Jervas dismounted and proceeded to tether
his horse to an adjacent tree, while Devereux watched him, head bowed
and black brows puckered slightly above his smouldering eyes, his
snowy cravat stained with a small mark of blood from an ugly scratch
beneath his chin and which, despite his icy assurance seemed to worry
him, for he dabbed at it now and then with his handkerchief.
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