It's fair murder." "That was your look-out when you insulted me," said I.
"It's the truth!" cried Alan, and he stood for a moment, wringing his mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity.

"It's the bare truth," he said, and drew his sword.

But before I could touch his blade with mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground.

"Na, na," he kept saying, "na, na--I cannae, I cannae." At this the last of my anger oozed all out of me; and I found myself only sick, and sorry, and blank, and wondering at myself.

I would have given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken, who can recapture it?
I minded me of all Alan's kindness and courage in the past, how he had helped and cheered and borne with me in our evil days; and then recalled my own insults, and saw that I had lost for ever that doughty friend.