ng
at him with that white and entirely unfrightened face.

Queed was, in fact, in the grip of a brand-new idea, an idea so sudden
and staggering that it overwhelmed him. He could not thrash Mr. Pat. He
could not thrash anybody. Anybody in the world that desired could put
gross insult upon his articles and go scot-free, the reason being that
the father of these articles was a physical incompetent.

All his life young Mr. Queed had attended to his own business, kept
quiet and avoided trouble. This was his first fight, because it was the
first time that anybody had publicly insulted his work. In his whirling
sunburst of indignation, he had somehow taken it for granted that he
could punch the head of a proof-reader in much the same way that he
punched the head off Smathers's arguments. Now he suddenly discovered
his mistake, and the discovery was going hard with him. Inside him there
was raging a demon of surprising violence of deportment; it urged him to
lay hold of some instrument of a rugged, murderous nature and
assassinate Mr. Pat. But higher up in him, in his head, there spoke the
stronger voice of his reason. While the demon screamed homicidally,
reason coldly reminded the young man that not to save his life could he
assassinate, or even hurt, Mr. Pat, and that the net result of another
endeavor to do so would be merely a second mortifying atmospheric
journey. Was it not unreasonable for a man, in a hopeless attempt to
gratify irrational passion, to take a step the sole and certain
consequences of which would be a humiliating soaring and curveting
through the air?

It was a terrible struggle, the marks of which broke out on the young
man's forehead in cold beads. But he was a rationalist among
rationalists, and in the end his reason subdued his demon. Therefore,
the little knot of linotypers and helpers who had stood wonderingly by
while the two adversaries stared at each other, through a tense
half-minute, now listened to the following dialogue:--

"I believe I said that I would give you a good thrashing. I now withdraw
those words, for I find that I am unable to make them good."

"I guess you ain't--what the divil did ye expect? Me to sit back with me
hands behind me and leave ye--"

"I earnestly desire to thrash you, but it is plain to me that I am not,
at present, in position to do so."

"Fergit it! What's afther ye, Mr. Queed--?"

"To get in position to thrash you, would take me a year, two years, five