Tom turned slowly, and then took a long look at him over the counter through halfshut eye-lids, with chin upraised, as if he had been suddenly afflicted with short sight; and worked on meanwhile steadily at his pills.

"That is, I wish—to speak to you, sir—ahem—!" went on Mr. Creed; being gradually but surely discomfited by Tom's steady gaze.

"Don't trouble yourself, sir: I see your case in your face. A slight nervous affection—will pass as the digestion improves. I will make you up a set of pills for the night; but I should advise a little ammonia and valerian at once. May I mix it?"

"Sir! you mistake me, sir!"

"Not in the least; you have brought me a challenge from Mr. Trebooze."

"I have, sir!" said the youth with a grand air, at once relieved by having the awful words said for him, and exalted by the dignity of his first, and perhaps last, employment in that line.

"Well, sir," said Tom deliberately, "Mr. Trebooze does me a kindness for which I cannot sufficiently thank him, and you also, as his second. It is full six months since I fought, and I was getting hardly to know myself again."

"You will have to fight now, sir!" said the youth, trying to brazen off by his discourtesy increasing suspicion that he had "caught a Tartar."

"Of course, of course. And of course, too, I fight you afterwards."

"I—I, sir? I am Mr. Trebooze's friend, his second, sir. You do not seem to understand, sir!"

"Pardon me, young gentleman," said Tom, in a very quiet, determined voice; "it is I who have a right to tell you that you do not understand in such matters as these. I had fought my man, and more than one of them, while you were eating blackberries in a short jacket."

"What do you mean, sir?" quoth the youth in fury; and began swearing a little.

"Simple fact. Are you not about twenty-three years old?"

"What is that to you, sir?"

"No business of mine, of course. You may be growing into your second childhood for aught I care: but if, as I guess, you are about twenty-three, I, as I know, am thirty-six: then I fought my first duel when you were five years old, and my tenth, I should say, when you were fifteen; at which time, I suppose, you were not ashamed either of the jacket or the blackberries."

"You will find me a man now, sir, at all events," said Creed, justly wroth at what was, after all, a sophism; for if a man is not a man at twenty, he never will be one.

"Tant mieux. You know, I suppose, that as the challenged, I have the choice of weapons?"

"Of course, sir," said Creed, in an off-hand generous tone, because he did not very clearly know.

"Then, sir, I always fight across a handkerchief. You will tell Mr. Trebooze so; he is, I really believe, a brave man, and will accept the terms. You will tell yourself the same, whether you be a brave man or not."

The youth lost the last words in those which went before them. He was no coward: would have stood up to be shot at, at fifteen paces, like any one else; but the deliberate butchery of fighting across a handkerchief—

"Do I understand you, sir?"

"That depends on whether you are clever enough, or not, to comprehend your native tongue. Across a handkerchief, I say, do you hear that?" And Tom rolled on at his pills.

"I do."

"And when I have fought him, I fight you!" And the pills rolled steadily at the same pace.

"But—sir?—Why—sir?"

"Because," said Tom, looking him full in the face, "because you, calling yourself a gentleman, and being, more shame for you, one by birth, dare to come here, for a foolish vulgar superstition called honour, to ask me, a quiet medical man, to go and be shot at by a man whom you know to be a drunken, profligate, blackguard: simply because, as you know as well as I, I interfered to prevent his insulting a poor helpless girl: and in so doing, was forced to give him what you, if you are (as I believe) a gentleman, would have given him also, in my place."

"I don't understand you, sir!" said the lad, blushing all the while, as one honestly conscience-stricken; for Tom had spoken the exact truth, and he knew it.

"Don't lie, sir, and tell me that you don't understand; you understand every word which I have spoken, and you know that it is true."

"Lie?"

"Yes, lie. Look you, sir; I have no wish to fight—"

"You will fight, though, whether you wish it or not," said the youth with a hysterical laugh, meant to be defiant.

"But—I can snuff a candle; I can split a bullet on a penknife at fifteen paces."

"Do you mean to frighten us by boasting? We shall see what you can do when you come on the ground."

"Across a handkerchief: but on no other condition; and, unless you will accept that condition, I will assuredly, the next time I see you, be we where we may, treat you as I treated your friend Mr. Trebooze. I'll do it now! Get out of my shop, sir! What do you want here, interfering with my honest business?"

And, to the astonishment of Mr. Trebooze's second, Tom vaulted clean over the counter, and rushed at him open-mouthed.

Sacred be the honour of the gallant West country: but, "both being friends," as Aristotle has it, "it is a sacred duty to speak the truth." Mr. Creed vanished through the open door.

"I rid myself of the fellow jollily," said Tom to Frank that day, after telling him the whole story.

"And no credit to me. I saw from the minute he came in there was no fight in him."

"But suppose he had accepted—or suppose Trebooze accepts still?"

"There was my game—to frighten him. He'll take care Trebooze shan't fight, for he knows that he must fight next. He'll go home and patch the matter up, trust him. Meanwhile, the oaf had not even savoir faire enough to ask for my second. Lucky for me; for I don't know where to have found one, save the lieutenant; and though he would have gone out safe enough, it would have been a bore for the good old fellow."

"And," said Prank, utterly taken aback by Tom's business-like levity, "you would actually have stood to shoot, and be shot at, across a handkerchief?"

Tom stuck out his great chin, and looked at him with one of his quaint sidelong moues.

"You are my very good friend, sir: but not my father-confessor."

"I know that: but really—as a mere question of human curiosity—"

"Oh, if you ask me on the human ground, and not on the sacerdotal, I'll tell you. I've tried it twice, and I should be sorry to try it again; though it's a very easy dodge. Keep your right elbow up—up to your ear—and the moment you hear the word, fire. A high elbow and a cool heart—that's all; and that wins."

"Wins? Good heavens? As you are here alive you must have killed your man?"

"No. I only shot my men each through the body; and each of them deserved it: but it is an ugly chance; I should have been sorry to try it on that yokel. The boy may make a man yet. And what's more," said Tom, bursting into a great laugh, "he will make a man, and go down to his fathers in peace, quant a moi; and so will that wretched Trebooze. For I'll bet you my head to a China orange, I hear no more of this matter; and don't even lose Trebooze's custom."

"Upon my word, I envy your sanguine temperament!"

"Mr. Headley, I shall quietly make my call at Trebooze to-morrow, as if nothing had happened. What will you bet me that I am not received as usual?"

"I never bet," said Frank.

"Then you do well. It is a foolish and a dirty trick; playing with edge tools, and cutting one's own fingers. Nevertheless, I speak truth, as you will see."

"You are a most extraordinary man. All this is so contrary to your usual caution."

"When you are driven against the ropes, 'hit out' is the old rule of Fistiana and common sense. It is an extreme bore: all the more reason for showing such an ugly front, as to give people no chance of its happening again. Nothing so dangerous as half-measures, Headley. 'Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,' your creed says. Mine only translates it into practice."

"I have no liking for half-measures myself."

"Did you ever," said Tom, "hear the story of the two Sandhurst broom-squires?"

"Broomsquires?"

"So we call, in Berkshire, squatters on the moor who live by tying heath into brooms. Two of them met in Reading market once, and fell out:—

"'How ever do you manage to sell your brooms for three halfpence? I steals the heth, and I steals the binds, and I steals the handles: and yet I can't afoord to sell 'em under twopence.'

"Ah, but you see,' says the other, 'I steals mine ready made.'

"Moral—If you're going to do a thing, do it outright."

That very evening, Tom came in again.

"Well; I've been to Trebooze."

"And fared, how?"

"Just as I warned you. Inquired into his symptoms; prescribed for his digestion—if he goes on as he is doing, he will soon have none left to prescribe for; and, finally, plastered, with a sublime generosity, the nose which my own knuckles had contused."

"Impossible! you are the most miraculously impudent of men!"

"Pish! simple common sense. I knew that Mrs. Trebooze would suspect that the world had heard of his mishap, and took care to let her know that I knew, by coming up to inquire for him."

"Cui bono?"

"Power. To have them, or any one, a little more in my power. Next, I knew that he dared not fly out at me, for fear I should tell Mrs. Trebooze what he had been after—you see? Ah, it was delicious to have the great oaf sitting sulking under my fingers, longing to knock my head off, and I plastering away, with words of deepest astonishment and condolence. I verily believe that, before we parted, I had persuaded him that his black eye proceeded entirely from his having run up against a tree in the dark."

"Well," said Frank, half sadly, though enjoying the joke in spite of himself, "I cannot help thinking it would have been a fit moment for giving the poor wretch a more solemn lesson."

"My dear sir,—a good licking—and he had one, and something over—is the best lesson for that manner of biped. That's the way to school him: but as we are on lessons, I'll give you a hint."

"Go on, model of self-sufficiency!" said Frank.

"Scoff at me if you will, I am proof. But hearken—you mustn't turn out that schoolmistress. She's an angel, and I know it; and if I say so of any human being, you may be sure I have pretty good reasons."

"I am beginning to be of your mind myself," said Frank.

END OF VOL. 1.