was quite forgetting to speak either Scotch or Elizabethan English, so
obvious was the absorption of his hearers, without these added aids to
command attention.

"And then I came round the corner of the club-house," he said, "and
there were Captain Puffin and the Major finishing their match on the
eighteenth hole."

"Then there's been no duel at all," said Diva, scraping the shell of the
crab.

"I feel sure of it. There wouldn't have been time for a duel and a round
of golf, in addition to the impossibility of playing golf immediately
after a duel. No nerves could stand it. Besides, I asked one of their
caddies. They had come straight from the tram to the club-house, and
from the club-house to the first tee. They had not been alone for a
moment."

"Wash-out," said Diva, wondering whether this had been worth four
shillings, so tame was the conclusion.

Mrs. Bartlett gave a little squeak which was her preliminary to speech.

"But I do not see why there may not be a duel yet, Kenneth," she said.
"Because they did not fight this morning--excellent crab, dear Diva, so
good of you to ask us--there's no reason why there shouldn't be a duel
this afternoon. O dear me, and cold beef as well: I shall be quite
stuffed. Depend upon it a man doesn't take the trouble to write a
challenge and all that, unless he means business."

The Padre held up his hand. He felt that he was gradually growing to be
the hero of the whole affair. He had certainly looked over the edge of
numberless hollows in the sand-dunes with vivid anticipations of having
a bullet whizz by him on each separate occasion. It behoved him to take
a sublime line.

"My dear," he said, "business is hardly a word to apply to murder. That
within the last twenty-four hours there was the intention of fighting a
duel, I don't deny. But something has decidedly happened which has
averted that deplorable calamity. Peace and reconciliation is the result
of it, and I have never seen two men so unaffectedly friendly."

Diva got up and whirled round the table to get the port for the Padre,
so pleased was she at a fresh idea coming to her while still dear
Elizabeth was resting. She attributed it to the crab.

"We've all been on a false scent," she said. "Peace and reconciliation
happened before they went out to the sand-dunes at all. It happened at
the station. They met at the station, you know. It is proved that Major
Flint went there. Major wouldn't send portmanteau off al