Crane stood leaning on the railing of the veranda and scowling savagely as Peck and Miss Moyne continued to promenade and converse. He was, without doubt, considering sinister things. Mrs. Bridges, finding him entirely unsympathetic, went to join Miss Crabb, who was alone where she had been left by Dufour. Meantime, up in his room, with his chair tilted far back and his feet thrust out over the sill of an open window, Dufour was smoking a fragrant Cuban cigar, (fifty cents at retail) and alternating smiles with frowns as he contemplated his surroundings. "Authors," he thought, "are the silliest, the vainest, and the most impractical lot of human geese that ever were plucked for their valuable feathers. And newspaper people! Humph!" He chuckled till his chin shook upon his immaculate collar. "Just the idea, now, of that young woman asking me to furnish her with points!" There was something almost jocund blent with his air of solid self-possession, and he smoked the precious cigars one after another with prodigal indifference and yet with the perfect grace of him to the manner born. "Hotel Helicon on Mt. Boab!" he repeated, and then betook himself to bed. VII. Some people are born to find things out--to overhear, to reach a place just at the moment in which an event comes to pass there--born indeed, with the news-gatherer's instinct perfectly developed. Miss Crabb was one of these. How she chanced to over-hear some low-spoken but deadly sounding words that passed between Peck and Crane, it would be hard to say; still she overheard them, and her heart jumped almost into her mouth. It was a thrillingly dramatic passage, there under the heavy-topped oak by the west veranda in the gloom. "Villain!" exclaimed Crane, in the hissing voice of a young tragedy-player at rehearsal, "Villain! you shall not escape me. Defend yourself!" "Nonsense," said Peck, "you talk like a fool. I don't want to fight! What's that you've got in your hand?" "A sword, you cowardly craven!" "You call me a coward! If I had a good club I should soon show you what I could do, you sneaking assassin!" More words and just as bitter followed, till at last a fight was agreed upon to take place immediately, at a certain point on the verge of a cliff not far away. There were to be no seconds and the meeting was to end in the death of one or both of the combatants. To Miss Crabb all this had a sound and an appearance as weird as anything in the wildest romance she ever had read. It was near mid-night; the hotel was quite soundless and the moon on high made the shadows short and black. "Meet me promptly at the Eagle's Nest in ten minutes," said Crane, "I'll fetch my other sword and give you choice." "All right, sir," responded Peck, "but a club would do."