They walked up the sandy village street, under the old hip-roofed houses, crossed the Branch bridge, and proceeded a quarter of a mile on the road to Washington. There, where a rivulet crossed the road amongst some bushes, they descended by a path into a copse, and on to a green meadow-space cleared away by former rain freshets. Farm boys, town boys, and intruders of all sorts were lurking near. The field of honor resembled a gypsy camp. Lieutenant Dibdo's companion came up to Tiltock and said that his friend did not wish to fight, and would make any manly apology, even though unconscious of offence, if the challenge was withdrawn. The crowd was ardent for the fight, and Tiltock, who was punctilious about honor, particularly where he could cut a safe figure, repelled the compromise, as "unwarranted by the code." He knew as much about the code as about honor, and more about both than about getting a living. "Then," said the lieutenant, "I am authorized to say that my principal will take Mr. Utie's first fire. Let him improve the generous chance as he will. The second time we will make business of it." The interlopers fell back. The word was given: "Ready--Aim--Fire!" Robert Utie, sustained by braggadocio, that quality which makes murderers die on the scaffold heroically, fired full at the body of Lieutenant Dibdo. That officer fired into the air and remained unmoved and unharmed. "Is another shot demanded?" "Yes," said Tiltock, "our honor is not yet satisfied." He waved the crowd back in an imperious way--they having rushed in after the first shot--and he gave the word himself like a dramatic reading. Robert Utie looked, and this time with a livid, sobered face, into the open pistol of the man he had provoked, the professional officer of death. The fine, cool face behind the pistol was concise, grave, and eloquent now as a judge's pronouncing the last sentence of the law. The next instant the boy was biting and clawing at the ground in mortal agony. The impatient crowd rushed in. A faint voice was heard to gasp for what some said was "water" and some thought was "mother." Then a figure with a dissipated face a little dignified by death, and with some of the softness of childhood glimmering in it, like the bright footfall of the good angel whose mission was done and whose flight was taken--this figure lay upon its back amongst the bushes, under the sunshine, peeped at by distant hills, contemplated by idlers as if it were the body of a slain game-chicken, and the drunken "surgeon" was idiotically feeling for its heart. "Gentlemen," said Tiltock with a flourish, "we are all witnesses that every thing has been honorably conducted."