I believe few successful duellists (if the word successful can be
applied to a superiority so fatal) have beheld their dead antagonist
stretched on the earth at their feet, without wishing they could
redeem with their own blood that which it has been their fate to
spill. Least of all could such indifference be the lot of so young a
man as Halbert Glendinning, who, unused to the sight of human blood,
was not only struck with sorrow, but with terror, when he beheld Sir
Piercie Shafton lie stretched on the green-sward before him, vomiting
gore as if impelled by the strokes of a pump. He threw his bloody
sword on the ground, and hastened to kneel and support him, vainly
striving, at the same time, to stanch his wound, which seemed rather
to bleed inwardly than externally.
The unfor
