“‘Can’t’ is no gentleman’s word, Dick,” he insisted, still fiercely emphatic upon the point of honor. “But just now you said that private quarrels----” “I was drunk then, on this vinegar stuff of Van Ditteraick’s; but I’m sober now. This thing that you propose is simply impossible, Dick. Can’t you see that it is?” I must confess that I did see it as a miserable choice between two evils. But my chance to win the love of Mistress Beatrix Leigh had not been lightly earned, and though it was but a chance, I dared not throw it away. “But if I have a good reason--the best of reasons--for not fighting Captain Seytoun at the present time,” I began. Pettus flung up his hand impatiently. “You are the judge of that; also of how far a gentleman from Virginia may go in the matter of eating dirt at his enemy’s hands. But don’t ask me to carry your apologies for his insults to this bully-ragging captain, Dick. I’m your friend.” I made the sign of acquiescence. The war would end, one day, and then I should be free of my fetterings. Since our legion had been sent across the river, I had had no opportunity of collision with Captain Seytoun--the opportunity which had recurred daily while the two legions, Baylor’s and Major Lee’s, had been quartered together below Tappan. If the gossiping orderly had only kept a still tongue in his head--but he had not, and here I was at Nyack, on Seytoun’s side of the river, with my finger in my mouth, like a schoolboy caught putting bent pins on the master’s seat, mad to have it out once for all with my tormentor, but more eager still to get away with a whole conscience. Matters were at this most exasperating poising-point, with the two of us sitting on opposite sides of the slab drinking-table and glowering at the half-emptied wine-bottle, when the choice was suddenly taken from me. There was a medley of hoof-clinkings on the stones of the inn yard, a great creaking of saddle leather and clanking of accouterments to go with the dismounting, and some four or five officers of Lee’s Horse tramped into Van Ditteraick’s bar and called for refreshment. Being fathoms deep in an ugly mood, I did not look up until I felt Jack calling me with his eyes. Then I saw that one of the in-comers was none other than this same Captain Howard Seytoun; that his red face and pig-like eyes spoke of other tavern visits earlier in the day; and that the ostentatious turning of his back upon me was merely the insulting preface to what should follow. What did follow gave me no time to consider. As if he were resuming a conversation that moment interrupted, Seytoun turned to the man next at hand--it was Cardrigg, of his own troop--and began to harp on the old out-worn lie; of how Richard Page, first of the name, had got his wife out of that ship-load of women gathered up by the London Company from God knows where and sent out to Virginia to mate with our pioneers, and how the taint had come down the line to make cowards of the men, and----