The man played his assigned part, and played it well. He brought the bill and stood waiting for results. Sage's face began to cloud up, his eyes to snap, and his nostrils to inflate like a horse's; then he broke out with-- "_Thirteen dollars!_ You mean to say that you charge thirteen dollars for these damned inhuman hospitalities of yours? Are you a professional buccaneer? Is it your custom to--" The man burst in with spirit: "Now, I don't want any more out of you--that's a plenty. The bill is thirteen dollars and you'll _pay_ it--that's all; a couple of characterless adventurers bilking their way through this country and attempting to dictate terms to a gentleman! a gentleman who received you supposing you were gentlemen yourselves, whereas in my opinion hell's full of--" Sage broke in-- "Not another word of that!--I won't have it. I regard you as the lowest-down thief that ever--" "Don't you use that word again! By ----, I'll take you by the neck and--" Harris came rushing out, and just as the two were about to grapple he pushed himself between them and began to implore-- "Oh, Dean, don't, _don't_--now, Mr. Smith, control yourself! Oh, think of your family, Dean!--think what a scandal--" But they burst out with maledictions, imprecations and all the hard names they could dig out of the rich accumulations of their educated memories, and in the midst of it the man shouted-- "When _gentlemen_ come to this house, I treat them _as_ gentlemen. When people come to this house with the ordinary appetites of gentlemen, I charge them a dollar and thirty cents for what I furnished you; but when a man brings a hell-fired Famine here that gorges a barrel of pork and four barrels of beans at two sittings--" Sage broke in, in a voice that was eloquent with remorse and self-reproach, "I never thought of that, and I ask your pardon; I am ashamed of myself and of my friend. Here's your thirteen dollars, and my apologies along with it." [_Dictated March 12, 1906._] I have always taken a great interest in other people's duels. One always feels an abiding interest in any heroic thing which has entered into his own experience. [Sidenote: (1878.)]