are all
drunk. You have made one of those foolish and disgusting mistakes to
which men in liquor are liable: but I should suppose you can muster
up sense enough between you to see that this man owes an apology."

"What if I refuse?"

"Why then, sir, I shall give myself the trouble to walk beside you
until your sense of decency is happily restored. If that should not
happen between this and your own door, I must leave you for the night
and call upon you to-morrow."

"This is no tone to take among gentlemen."

"It is the tone you oblige me to take."

"Come away, Jack!" Hetty besought him in a whisper: but she knew
that he would not.

"Surely," he said, "after so gross an offence you will lose no more
time in begging my sister's pardon?"

"Look you now, master parson," growled the offender, "you are thin in
the legs, but I am not too drunk to shoot snipe." With his gun he
menaced John, who did not flinch.

But here Dick Ellison interposed. "Don't be a fool, Congdon! Put up
your gun and say you're sorry, like a gentleman. Damme"--Dick in his
cups was notoriously quarrelsome and capricious as to the grounds of
quarrel--"she's my sister, too, for that matter. And Jack's my
brother: and begad, he has the right of it. He's a pragmatical
fellow, but as plucky as ginger, and I love him for it. Fight him,
you'll have to fight me--understand? So up and say you're sorry,
like a man."

"Oh, if you're going to take that line, I'm willing enough."
Mr. Congdon shuffled out an apology.

"_That's_ right," Dick Ellison announced. "Now shake hands on it,
like good fellows. Jack's as good a man as any of us for all his
long coat."

"Excuse me," John interrupted coldly, "I have no wish to shake hands
with any of you. I accept for my sister Mr. Congdon's assurance that
he is ashamed of himself, and now you are at liberty to go your way."

"At liberty!" grumbled one: but, to Hetty's surprise, they went.
Jack might not understand women: he could master men. For her part
she thought he might have shaken hands and parted in good-fellowship.
She listened to the sportsmen's unsteady retreat. At a little
distance they broke into defiant laughter, but discomfiture was in
the sound.

"Come," said John. She took his arm and they walked on together
towards Wroote.

For a while neither spoke. Hetty was thinking of a story once told
her by her mother: how that once the Rector, then a young man, had
been sitting in Smi