“Very well, sir; my brother Frank has doubtless by this time reached home, and will, with any friend whom you may appoint, arrange the terms of the meeting;” and, lifting his hat, Ralph Houston, “more in sorrow than in anger,” turned away. “There is no honorable way of escaping it, Frank, else be sure that I should not give him this meeting. As it is, I must receive his fire; but, so help me Heaven; nothing shall induce me to return it,” said Captain Houston, as he talked over the matter with his brother that evening in the private parlor of the little inn at Belleview. “Then, without a thought of defending yourself, you will stand up as a mark to be shot at by the best marksman in the country? You will be murdered! just simply murdered!” replied the younger man, in sorrow and disgust. “There is no help for it, Frank. I must meet him, must receive his fire, and will not return it!” “You will fall,” said the youth, in a voice of despair. “Probably. And if I do, Frank, go to my dearest Margaret and bear to her my last words. Tell her that I never so sinned against our mutual faith as for one instant to doubt her perfect purity; tell her that I was on my way to take her to my heart, to give her my name and to defend her against the world, when this fatal quarrel was forced upon me; tell her that I never fired upon her father, but that I died with her name upon my lips and her love within my heart. If I fall, as I probably shall, will you tell my widowed bride this?” “I will! I will!” exclaimed Frank, in a voice of deep emotion. Meanwhile the innocent and most unhappy cause of the impending duel had passed a miserable week on the solitary island, in dread anticipation of her father’s and her lover’s return, and with no one near her to breathe one hopeful, comforting, or sustaining word to her fainting heart. It was late on the evening of the day of her father’s arrival that she sat alone on the front piazza of her solitary dwelling, wrapped in despairing thought, yet with every nerve acute with involuntary vigilance, when, amid the low, musical semi-silence of the autumnal night, the sound of a boat, pushed gratingly up upon the gravelly beach, reached her listening ear. And while she still watched and waited in breathless anxiety, she perceived by the clear starlight the tall figure of a man, dressed in the blue and buff uniform of an American officer, and in whose stature, air, and gait she recognized her father, approaching the house. In joy, but still more in fear, she arose and hurried to meet him. But so terrible was the trouble of her mind and the agitation of her frame, that she could scarcely falter forth her inaudible words of welcome before she sank exhausted in his arms.