Tom gave a sarcastic grunt. His manifestations regarding Margaret's behaviour were the only exception to the kind, cheerful conduct of his whole life. A younger brother is not ordinarily so watchful of a sister's demeanour; he has the doings of other young ladies to concern himself with. Tom did not lack these, but he was none the less keenly sensitive upon the point of Margaret's propriety and good name. 'Twas the extraordinary love and pride he had centred upon her, that made him so observant and so touchy in the case. He brooded upon her actions, worried himself with conjectures, underwent such torments as jealous lovers know, such pangs as Hamlet felt in his uncertainty regarding the integrity of his mother. Within a week after the Morris ball, it came to pass that Captain Falconer was quartered, by regular orders, in the house of Mr. Faringfield. Tom and I, though we only looked our thoughts, saw more than accident in this. The officer occupied the large parlour, which he divided by curtains into two apartments, sitting-room and sleeping-chamber. By his courtesy and vivacity, he speedily won the regard of the family, even of Mr. Faringfield and the Rev. Mr. Cornelius. "Damn the fellow!" said Tom to me. "I can't help liking him." "Nor I, either," was my reply; but I also damned him in my turn. CHAPTER X. _A Fine Project._ Were it my own history that I am here undertaking, I should give at this place an account of my first duel, which was fought with swords, in Bayard's Woods, my opponent being an English lieutenant of foot, from whom I had suffered a display of that superciliousness which our provincial troops had so resented in the British regulars in the old French War. By good luck I disarmed the man without our receiving more than a small scratch apiece; and subsequently brought him to the humbleness of a fawning spaniel, by a mien and tone of half-threatening superiority which never fail of reducing such high-talking sparks to abject meekness. 'Twas a trick of pretended bullying, which we long-suffering Americans were driven to adopt in self-defence against certain derisive, contemptuous praters that came to our shores from Europe. But 'tis more to my purpose, as the biographer of Philip Winwood, to continue upon the subject of Captain Falconer.