u,
be we where we may, treat you as I treated your friend Mr. Trebooze.
I'll do it now! Get out of my shop, sir! What do you want here,
interfering with my honest business?"

And, to the astonishment of Mr. Trebooze's second, Tom vaulted clean
over the counter, and rushed at him open-mouthed.

Sacred be the honour of the gallant West country: but, "both being
friends," as Aristotle has it, "it is a sacred duty to speak the
truth." Mr. Creed vanished through the open door.

"I rid myself of the fellow jollily," said Tom to Frank that day,
after telling him the whole story.

"And no credit to me. I saw from the minute he came in there was no
fight in him."

"But suppose he had accepted--or suppose Trebooze accepts still?"

"There was my game--to frighten him. He'll take care Trebooze shan't
fight, for he knows that he must fight next. He'll go home and patch
the matter up, trust him. Meanwhile, the oaf had not even _savoir
faire_ enough to ask for my second. Lucky for me; for I don't know
where to have found one, save the lieutenant; and though he would
have gone out safe enough, it would have been a bore for the good old
fellow."

"And," said Prank, utterly taken aback by Tom's business-like levity,
"you would actually have stood to shoot, and be shot at, across a
handkerchief?"

Tom stuck out his great chin, and looked at him with one of his quaint
sidelong moues.

"You are my very good friend, sir: but not my father-confessor."

"I know that: but really--as a mere question of human curiosity--"

"Oh, if you ask me on the human ground, and not on the sacerdotal,
I'll tell you. I've tried it twice, and I should be sorry to try it
again; though it's a very easy dodge. Keep your right elbow up--up to
your ear--and the moment you hear the word, fire. A high elbow and a
cool heart--that's all; and that wins."

"Wins? Good heavens? As you are here alive you must have killed your
man?"

"No. I only shot my men each through the body; and each of them
deserved it: but it is an ugly chance; I should have been sorry to try
it on that yokel. The boy may make a man yet. And what's more," said
Tom, bursting into a great laugh, "he will make a man, and go down
to his fathers in peace, _quant a moi_; and so will that wretched
Trebooze. For I'll bet you my head to a China orange, I hear no more
of this matter; and don't even lose Trebooze's custom."

"Upon my word, I envy your sanguine temperament!"

"Mr. Headley, I