Manoel by a last effort wished to insist on fighting him instead of Benito.
“No, Manoel,” was the cool reply, “it is for me alone to avenge my father, and as everyhthing here ought to be in order, you shall be my second.”
“Benito!”
“As for you, Fragoso, you will not refuse if I ask you to act as second for that man?”
“So be it,” answered Fragoso, “though it is not an office of honor. Without the least ceremony,” he added, “I would have killed him like a wild beast.”
The place where the duel was about to take place was a level bank about fifty paces long, on the top of a cliff rising perpendicularly some fifty feet above the sss. The river slowly flowed at the foot, and bathed the clumps of reeds which bristled round its base.
There was, therefore, none too much room, and the combatan
