Possibly he had taken half-a-dozen lessons in rapier art, and practised what he learned with an Englishman as heavy and awkward as himself.

But that was all.

He made a few wild clumsy rushes, parrying widely.

When I had foiled these, the danger was over, and I held him at my mercy.
I played with him a little while, watching the sweat gather on his brow and the shadow of the church tower fall deeper and darker, like the shadow of doom, on his face.

Not out of cruelty--God knows I have never erred in that direction!--but because, for the first time in my life, I felt a strange reluctance to strike the blow.