"Oh, really?" sneered Roderic, "and who stark-and-stiffed him, pray?"
"I did," replied Fitz-James. "I did him in proper." (Subaltern language, this.)
"H'm," commented Roderic. "That's awkward—because the side wins that gets first blood. . . ."
"Was there any blood?" he added, as an idea struck him, and he saw a loop-hole of escape from the operation of the baleful prophecy.
"Lots," was the depressing answer. "I stained a whole roll of braid in the best of it. All my clo'ves too—and his. Norful mess!"
"Well, anyhow, it's beneath the cliff, he lies, not 'whiff'. I daresay there is a whiff, by now—but that's not what you meant."
The bitterness of death was not past for Roderic, and he spoke bitterly.
As he prepared to fight his last fight and meet his end at the hand of the hated Southron, he protruded his tongue and made a shocking grimace.
"Yah! Fizz-Jimmy, you beastly Sack-Son," quoth he, "Come on! Beware! Thy hand must
