“Marse Major, Jim done obtains it from that red-head Jew gentleman I sees romancin' 'round yere this mornin'. An' say, Marse Major; don't you-all reckon Jim better skuffle for your room an' fotch your box of pistols?” “Pistols!” I exclaimed, stopping short; “what in the name of General Jackson do I. want of pistols?” “Oh, nothin', Marse Major, jest nothin',” said Jim, shifting uneasily on his feet. “It's simply one of them old-time Cumberland idees of Jim's. D' fac' is, Marse Major, Jim sort o' allows from d' signs how dish yere red-head Jew gentleman's gwine to have a fight.” CHAPTER IV--THE JEW AND HIS SPANISH SWORD Jim's surmise of trouble on the brew set fire to my feet. At the door of the card room I met Duff Green coming out--Duff of the Oporto nose. I barely nodded; I could taste of insincerity and a suave false slyness on the man as one smells secret fire in a house. As I pushed into the card room, while it was well filled of folk, my first glance revealed nothing to justify Jim's fears. There was Noah, truly; and sitting with him that Kentucky Yankee, the anxious Amos Kendall. Isaac Hill, gray and thin, and limping with his club-foot, was also about. These were the General's friends; there was naught to anticipate of a misunderstanding with Noah from them. And for all that, Jim was right; calm as showed the surface, there ran an undertow of conversation which flowed for storm. Jim, who lived long among fighting men on fighting ground, had attained perhaps some sharpened sense for the sign or sound of approaching strife, and could foretell it while yet a mile away, Kendall was by Noah's side, and Hill had paused at his elbow; yet it was with neither of these he was engaged. Against the corner of a mantelpiece, and two paces from Noah, leaned a young man of dissolute look. His name, I learned, was Catron, and he came from Port Tobacco, a small hamlet in the southern toe of Maryland. Evidently, Catron was of an upper class in his country, as his dress, and fine hands, smallish and unmarred of toil, would give a signal. He had been drinking, but seemed more vicious than drunk. Catron was doing the talking, and with a manner of itself an insult seemed bent for altercation. “Don't cross the run of things,” warned Noah, in a whisper, as I marked my advent by dropping a hand upon his shoulder; “I am glad you are come; but don't interfere. Affairs go famously.” Willing to gain some insight of the trend of traffic, I paused behind Noah's chair. “That I should cross words,” Catron was saying, “with a Jackson Jew does not tell in favor of my respectability. It is what one must look for, however, when the beggars of politics are promoted to the saddle.”