e,
brandishing his cane defensively.

"Let me see," said Turnbull, looking round to MacIan with the same
blandness. "Who are we?"

"Come out," screamed the little man with the stick.

"Certainly," said Turnbull, and went outside with the sword, MacIan
following.

Seen more fully, with the evening light on his face, the strange man
looked a little less like a goblin. He wore a square pale-grey jacket
suit, on which the grey butterfly tie was the only indisputable touch
of affectation. Against the great sunset his figure had looked merely
small: seen in a more equal light it looked tolerably compact and
shapely. His reddish-brown hair, combed into two great curls, looked
like the long, slow curling hair of the women in some pre-Raphaelite
pictures. But within this feminine frame of hair his face was
unexpectedly impudent, like a monkey's.

"What are you doing here?" he said, in a sharp small voice.

"Well," said MacIan, in his grave childish way, "what are _you_ doing
here?"

"I," said the man, indignantly, "I'm in my own garden."

"Oh," said MacIan, simply, "I apologize."

Turnbull was coolly curling his red moustache, and the stranger stared
from one to the other, temporarily stunned by their innocent assurance.

"But, may I ask," he said at last, "what the devil you are doing in my
summer-house?"

"Certainly," said MacIan. "We were just going to fight."

"To fight!" repeated the man.

"We had better tell this gentleman the whole business," broke in
Turnbull. Then turning to the stranger he said firmly, "I am sorry, sir,
but we have something to do that must be done. And I may as well tell
you at the beginning and to avoid waste of time or language, that we
cannot admit any interference."

"We were just going to take some slight refreshment when you interrupted
us..."

The little man had a dawning expression of understanding and stooped and
picked up the unused bottle of wine, eyeing it curiously.

Turnbull continued:

"But that refreshment was preparatory to something which I fear you will
find less comprehensible, but on which our minds are entirely fixed,
sir. We are forced to fight a duel. We are forced by honour and an
internal intellectual need. Do not, for your own sake, attempt to stop
us. I know all the excellent and ethical things that you will want to
say to us. I know all about the essential requirements of civil order:
I have written leading articles about them all my life. I know all