untry creeping into decent houses and
taking advantage of gentlemen's confidence to enrich themselves by base
intrigues.

'Rene dropped his absurd trumpet and made one of his best bows. I knew
he was angry from the way he rolled his "r's."

'"Ver-r-ry good," said he. "For that I shall have much pleasure to
kill you now and here. Monsieur Gamm,"--another bow to Jerry--"you will
please lend him your pistol, or he shall have mine. I give you my word I
know not which is best; and if he will choose a second from his friends
over there"--another bow to our drunken yokels at the gate--"we will
commence."

'"That's fair enough," said Jerry. "Tom Dunch, you owe it to the Doctor
to be his second. Place your man." '"No," said Tom. "No mixin' in
gentry's quarrels for me." And he shook his head and went out, and the
others followed him.

'"Hold on," said Jerry. "You've forgot what you set out to do up at the
alehouse just now. You was goin' to search me for witch-marks; you
was goin' to duck me in the pond; you was goin' to drag all my bits
o' sticks out o' my little cottage here. What's the matter with you?
Wouldn't you like to be with your old woman tonight, Tom?"

'But they didn't even look back, much less come. They ran to the village
alehouse like hares.

'"No matter for these canaille," said Rene, buttoning up his coat so
as not to show any linen. All gentlemen do that before a duel, Dad
says--and he's been out five times. "You shall be his second, Monsieur
Gamm. Give him the pistol."

'Doctor Break took it as if it was red-hot, but he said that if Rene
resigned his pretensions in certain quarters he would pass over the
matter. Rene bowed deeper than ever.

'"As for that," he said, "if you were not the ignorant which you are,
you would have known long ago that the subject of your remarks is not
for any living man."

'I don't know what the subject of his remarks might have been, but he
spoke in a simply dreadful voice, my dear, and Doctor Break turned quite
white, and said Rene was a liar; and then Rene caught him by the throat,
and choked him black.

'Well, my dear, as if this wasn't deliciously exciting enough, just
exactly at that minute I heard a strange voice on the other side of
the hedge say, "What's this? What's this, Bucksteed?" and there was my
father and Sir Arthur Wesley on horseback in the lane; and there was
Rene kneeling on Doctor Break, and there was I up in the oak, listening
with all my ears.