n old man, who was of no better
blood than himself, be rich enough to rob him of the woman whom he
loved? And why, above all, should Barclay Fetters have education and
money and every kind of opportunity, which he did not appreciate,
while he, who would have made good use of them, had nothing? With this
sense of wrong, which grew as his brain clouded more and more, there
came, side by side, a vague zeal to right these wrongs. As he grew
drunker still, his thoughts grew less coherent; he lost sight of his
special grievance, and merely retained the combative instinct.

He had reached this dangerous stage, and had, fortunately, passed it
one step farther along the road to unconsciousness--fortunately,
because had he been sober, the result of that which was to follow
might have been more serious--when two young men, who had come down
from the ballroom for some refreshment, entered the barroom and asked
for cocktails. While the barkeeper was compounding the liquor, the
young men spoke of the ball.

"That little Treadwell girl is a peach," said one. "I could tote a
bunch of beauty like that around the ballroom all night."

The remark was not exactly respectful, nor yet exactly disrespectful.
Ben looked up from his seat. The speaker was Barclay Fetters, and his
companion one Tom McRae, another dissolute young man of the town. Ben
got up unsteadily and walked over to where they stood.

"I want you to un'erstan'," he said thickly, "that no gen'l'man would
mensh'n a lady's name in a place like this, or shpeak dissuspeckerly
'bout a lady 'n any place; an' I want you to unerstan' fu'thermo' that
you're no gen'l'man, an' that I'm goin' t' lick you, by G--d!"

"The hell you are!" returned Fetters. A scowl of surprise rose on his
handsome face, and he sprang to an attitude of defence.

Ben suited the action to the word, and struck at Fetters. But Ben was
drunk and the other two were sober, and in three minutes Ben lay on
the floor with a sore head and a black eye. His nose was bleeding
copiously, and the crimson stream had run down upon his white shirt
and vest. Taken all in all, his appearance was most disreputable. By
this time the liquor he had drunk had its full effect, and complete
unconsciousness supervened to save him, for a little while, from the
realisation of his disgrace.

"Who is the mucker, anyway?" asked Barclay Fetters, readjusting his
cuffs, which had slipped down in the melee.

"He's a chap by the name of Dud