The door opened, and Deane Lee in gray tweed, from foot to forage-cap the dashing soldier, saluted. "Honor to report from Captain Nettles," he said, touching his cap. Military titles prevail on such occasions. "Will you join us?" said Payne, motioning to the refreshments, as Mason read the note. "Don't care if I do. Plain: no cooked drinks for me," said the envoy briefly. This struck the major as having a judicial bearing upon the coats of the stomach. He cocked his chin and began unconsciously to imitate the dashing stranger. "An unfortunate affair," said Payne. He had thought it amusing, absurd, but something in this young fellow impressed him also, and he said it, and meant it. "D---- unlucky!" said the other, in much the same tone as if he had said "lucky." "But my man is all right. He had to hunt me up, or I'd been in your lines before now." He took the ice from the tumbler, dashed off the moisture, and ate it like a salamander. The major was possessed. He whispered behind his hand to his neighbors, "Never saw but one like him." "Who?" asked several, for the easy, cool assurance of Bob Nettles's second affected them all. The major shook his head and sighed grievously. "Was he killed?" asked one eagerly. "Kill him!" said the major in hollow emphasis of scorn: "no, sir." "Died, then?" suggested another. "No, sir," said the major: "his worst enemy could not say that of him. No, he didn't die." "Drowned?" put in a third, venturing at the major's conundrum. "No, sir," said the major gutturally. "Water couldn't drown him. It is not wet enough. Lost." "Lost!" marvelled his auditors at this sphinx. "How?" "Married," said the major in basso-profundo, husky with emotion. Such an ornament lost to the chivalry of duelling accentuated their admiration of his after-type in Bob's second. "When I last saw him," continued the major, in the tone of Griffith describing the last hours of Wolsey-- "Well?" ejaculated all in one voice. "He was buying seed-corn." Degradation could no lower go, and in the pause they could hear the blue fly buzz in the window-pane. Mason had beckoned Payne aside. The two found that reply a hard nut to crack. Payne had regarded the duel as a huge hoax, and counted on easily bluffing the burgher's second. But bluffing those steely nerves yonder, that stood at ease with a suggestion of military accoutrements, was not to be thought of. Nor could his principal go out, under the pretext of controlling the associations of Walter Brown's family, without Walter Brown's approval. "For proper reasons, no doubt," said Payne courteously, "your principal ignores what is, with us, the gravamen of his offence--his behavior in the house of Mr. Mason's relations." Pretty well covered for Mr. Payne, but it would not do.