The town was greatly diverted by these pungent echoes of the bloodless fight, and Shields and Whitesides felt that their honor was still out of repair. A rapid series of challenges succeeded among the parties, principals and seconds changing places as deftly as dancers in a quadrille. The Auditor challenged Mr. Butler, who had been very outspoken in his contemptuous comments on the affair. Butler at once accepted, and with a grim sincerity announced his conditions--"to fight next morning at sunrising in Bob Allen's meadow, one hundred yards' distance, with rifles." This was instantly declined, with a sort of horror, by Shields and Whitesides, as such a proceeding would have proved fatal to their official positions and their means of livelihood. They probably cared less for the chances of harm from Butler's Kentucky rifle than for the certainty of the Illinois law which cut off all duelists from holding office in the State. But, on the other hand,--so unreasonable is human nature as displayed among politicians,--General Whitesides felt that if he bore patiently the winged words of Merryman, his availability as a candidate was greatly damaged; and he therefore sent to the witty doctor what Mr. Lincoln called "a quasi-challenge," hurling at him a modified defiance, which should be enough to lure him to the field of honor, and yet not sufficiently explicit to lose Whitesides the dignity and perquisites of Fund Commissioner. Merryman, not being an office-holder and having no salary to risk, responded with brutal directness, which was highly unsatisfactory to Whitesides, who was determined not to fight unless he could do so lawfully; and Lincoln, who now acted as second to the doctor in his turn, records the cessation of the correspondence amid the agonized explanations of Whitesides and the scornful hootings of Merryman, "while the town was in a ferment and a street fight somewhat anticipated." In respect to the last diversion the town was disappointed.