ithers that she had seen Mr. Hopkins ...
no, that was impossible: she must write it, if she decided (for Withers'
sake) to make this fell communication.

Miss Mapp turned and tossed on her uneasy bed, and her mind went back to
the Major and the Captain and that fiasco in the fog. Of course she was
perfectly at liberty (having made her promise under practical
compulsion) to tell everybody in Tilling what had occurred, trusting to
the chivalry of the men not to carry out their counter threat, but
looking at the matter quite dispassionately, she did not think it would
be wise to trust too much to chivalry. Still, even if they did carry out
their unmanly menace, nobody would seriously believe that she had been
drunk. But they might make a very disagreeable joke of pretending to do
so, and, in a word, the prospect frightened her. Whatever Tilling did or
did not believe, a residuum of ridicule would assuredly cling to her,
and her reputation of having perhaps been the cause of the quarrel
which, so happily did not end in a duel, would be lost for ever. Evie
would squeak, quaint Irene would certainly burst into hoarse laughter
when she heard the story. It was very inconvenient that honesty should
be the best policy.

Her brain still violently active switched off for a moment on to the
eternal problem of the portmanteau. Why, so she asked herself for the
hundredth time, if the portmanteau contained the fatal apparatus of
duelling, did not the combatants accompany it? And if (the only other
alternative) it did not----?

An idea so luminous flashed across her brain that she almost thought the
room had leaped into light. The challenge distinctly said that Major
Benjy's seconds would wait upon Captain Puffin in the course of the
morning. With what object then could the former have gone down to the
station to catch the early train? There could be but one object, namely
to get away as quickly as possible from the dangerous vicinity of the
challenged Captain. And why did Captain Puffin leave that note on his
table to say that he was suddenly called away, except in order to escape
from the ferocious neighbourhood of his challenger?

"The cowards!" ejaculated Miss Mapp. "They both ran away from each
other! How blind I've been!"

The veil was rent. She perceived how, carried away with the notion that
a duel was to be fought among the sand-dunes, Tilling had quite
overlooked the significance of the early train. She felt sure that she