I think he was going, on to tell how it wrought in the women of our house when my hand fell upon his shoulder and he was made to spin around and face me. I do not know what I said; nor would Jack Pettus tell me afterward. I know only that there was a hubbub of voices, that the murky candlelight of the dismal kennel had gone red before my eyes, that Seytoun’s fat hand was lifted, and that before it could fall I had done something that brought sudden quiet in the low-ceiled room, like the hush before a tornado. Seytoun was dabbling his handkerchief against the livid welt across his cheek when he said, with an indrawing of the breath: “Ah-h! So you _will_ fight, then, after all, will you, Mr. Page? I had altogether despaired of it, I do assure you. To whom shall I send my friend?--and where?” Pettus saved me the trouble of replying; saved me more than that, I think, for the red haze was rising again, and Seytoun’s great bulk was fast taking the shape of some loathsome thing that should be throttled there and then, and flung aside as carrion. “Captain Page lodges with me to-night at Tappan,” I heard Jack say, and his voice seemed to come from a great distance. And then: “I shall be most happy to arrange the business with your friend, Captain Seytoun, the happier, since my own mother’s mother was a Page.” After which I was as a man dazed until I realized that we were out-of-doors, Pettus and I, in the cold frosty mist, and that Jack was pitching me into the saddle of a borrowed horse for the gallop to the camp at Tappan. “I’ve taken it for granted that your leave covers to-night and to-morrow morning,” said this next friend of mine, when we were fairly facing southward. “It does,” I replied; and then with the battle murmur still singing in my ears, and the hot blood yet hammering for its vengeful outlet: “Let it be at daybreak, in the grass cove at the mouth of the creek, and with trooper swords.” It was coming on to the early December dusk when we rode through the headquarters cantonments below Tappan village, and the four miles had been passed in sober silence. I know not what Jack Pettus was thinking of to make him ride with his lips tight shut; but I do know that my own thoughts were far from clamoring for speech. For now a certain thing was plain to me, and momently growing plainer. By some means Seytoun had learned that I was under bond not to fight him, and he knew what it would cost me if I did. Wherefore, his repeated provocations had an object--which object would be gained, and at my expense, whichever way the morning’s weather-cock of life and death should veer. Hot on this thought came the huge conviction that I had merely played into my sworn enemy’s hands. If he should kill me, I should certainly be the loser; if I should kill him, I should still be the loser, with the added drawback of being alive to feel my loss.