“You needn’t answer my question, ma’am,” resumed Johnny Kent. “This pestiferous Cuban gent wanders over here without bein’ invited and makes himself unpopular. It’s as plain as a picture on the wall.” The spinster realized that it was her duty to intervene as a peace-maker between these belligerents, but she felt powerless to move from the spot, which happened to be in the middle of Johnny Kent’s imaginary pasture, between the brook and the hay-field. The proprietor thereof, advancing close to Colonel Calvo, thundered, “Ha! Ha!” and firmly grasped the warrior’s nose between a mighty thumb and forefinger. The colonel yelled with rage and pain, and fumbled for the hilt of his sword. With dignified deliberation the chief engineer released the imprisoned nose, turned the colonel squarely around by the shoulders, and kicked him until his spurs jingled like little bells. “There! I hope you’re real insulted, right down to the heels,” commented the avenger. Colonel Calvo painfully straightened himself, managed to haul the sword clear of the scabbard, waved it undecidedly and shrieked: “Mos’ likely you have the pistol in your pants to kill me with. I will fight the duello with you. You have insult’ me in my mortal part. You refuse me to fight with pistols, quick, as soon as it can be arrange’?” “Bully for you,” cordially answered Johnny Kent. “Sure thing. I’ll be delighted.” He had one eye on Miss Hollister as he continued in resonant tones: “We will duel to the death.” “I will sen’ my frien’ to see your frien’, señor,” was the grandiloquent response of Colonel Calvo. “An’ I will kill you mos’ awful dead.” “It will be a pleasure to turn up my toes in defence of a lady,” fervently declaimed the engineer as Colonel Calvo limped in the direction of his own camp, filling the air with such explosive imprecations that it was as though he left a string of cannon-crackers in his wake. Johnny Kent mopped his face, smiled contentedly, and turned his attention to the dumfounded spinster. “But are you in earnest?” she gasped. “Never more so, ma’am,” and he added, with seeming irrelevance, “I suppose you have heard that Cap’n O’Shea and Mr. Van Steen came near fightin’ a duel yesterday afternoon.” “Yes, Mr. Van Steen admitted as much. It was a most inexplicable affair. What in the world has it to do with your terrible quarrel with Colonel Calvo?” “You understand just why I am perpetratin’ the duel with the colonel, don’t you, ma’am?” asked Johnny Kent, showing some slight anxiety. “I--I imagine--” She blushed, looked distressed, and said with a confusion prettily girlish, “I am afraid I had something to do with it.”