‘’Tis likely not,’ coolly returned the adventurer, as he took a survey of the apartment. ‘This sort of place, I don’t mind admitting, is a cut, or even two cuts above me. Still, business is business, Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet, and has got to be attended to, I reckon, even in such a gen-teel spot as this is, mister!’ There must be something in the American twang and the American forms of speech which all the world over hits the fancy of British-born rovers of Hold’s caste, for in every quarter of the globe our home-reared rovers affect the idiom, and sometimes the accent, of Sam Slick’s countrymen. ‘I am scarcely aware, Mr Hold,’ said the baronet with cold politeness, ‘what business it can be to which I am indebted for the favour of your company, to-day.’ ‘Aren’t you, though, skipper?’ echoed Hold, whose natural audacity, for a moment repressed by the weight as it were of the grandeur around him, began to assert itself afresh. ‘Well, let every fellow paddle his own canoe and shoe his own mustangs. The question is, Are you dealing fairly by me or are you not, Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet?’ ‘I assure you that you are talking Greek to me,’ said the master of Carbery Chase, with a tinge of colour rising to his pale face. ‘A nod,’ persisted Hold, ‘is as good every bit as a wink—you know the rest of it, mister. But since you want plain speaking, you shall have it. You can’t have forgot, no more than I can, that our bargain was just this: A certain young lady was to be married to a certain young gentleman.’ ‘I apprehend that you allude to—to my ward—Miss Ruth Willis,’ said the baronet hesitatingly. ‘You’ve hit it exactly,’ exclaimed Hold, with a slap of his hard hand upon the crown of his hard hat, which sounded like a muffled drum, somewhat to the discomfiture of its proprietor, who eyed its ruffled surface ruefully. ‘When is the wedding to come off?’ Sir Sykes contemplated his ruffianly visitor with a disgust which it required all his prudence to dissemble. ‘In civilised society,’ he said coldly, ‘events of that sort do not take place with quite so expeditious a disregard of difficulties as your very apposite question suggests. In the backwoods it is perhaps otherwise.’ ‘In the backwoods,’ roughly retorted Hold, ‘we don’t shilly-shally about righting a wrong, no more than about the marrying of a young couple that hev made up their minds to it. And let me tell you, Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet, the superfine Saxony you fine gentlemen wear covers bigger rogues, often, than ever did the deerskin hunting-shirt with its Indian embroidery of wampum and coloured quills. Backwoodsmen! I’ve been in white-fisted company less to be trusted than theirs.’ Sir Sykes had imbibed too much of the spirit of that modern civilised society of which he spoke, to be readily nettled into a burst of anger by such taunts as these. Cool, save for one moment, from the first, the temperature of his calmly flowing blood seemed to grow more frigid as Hold’s warmed.