"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" "I ought to knock your block off," said Mr. McFaddan, without raising his voice. As his face was within six inches of Stuyvesant's nose, the young man had no difficulty whatever in hearing what he said, and yet it should not be considered strange that he failed to understand. In all fairness, it must be said that he was bewildered. Under the circumstances any one would have been bewildered. Being spoken to in that fashion by a man you've never seen before in your life is, to say the least, surprising. "I'll give you ten seconds to apologize." "Ap--apologize? Confound you, what do you mean? You're drunk." "I said ten seconds," growled Cornelius. "And then what?" gulped Stuyvie. "A swat on the nose," said Mr. McFaddan. At no point in the course of this narrative has there been either proof or assertion that Smith-Parvis, Junior, possessed the back-bone of a caterpillar. It has been stated, however, that he was a young man of considerable bulk. We have assumed, correctly, that this rather impressive physique masked a craven spirit. As a matter of fact, he was such a prodigious coward that he practised all manner of "exercises" in order to develop something to inspire in his fellow-men the belief that he would be a pretty tough customer to tackle. Something is to be said for his method. It has been successfully practised by man ever since the day that Solomon, in all his glory, arrayed himself so sumptuously that the whole world hailed him as the wisest man extant. Stuyvie took great pride in revealing his well-developed arms; it was not an uncommon thing for him to ask you to feel his biceps, or his back muscles, or the cords in his thigh; he did a great deal of strutting in his bathing suit at such places as Atlantic City, Southampton and Newport. In a way, it paid to advertise. Now when Mr. McFaddan, a formidable-looking person, made that emphatic remark, Stuyvesant realized that there was no escape. He was trapped. Panic seized him. In sheer terror he struck blindly at the awful, reddish thing that filled his vision. He talked a good deal about it afterwards, explaining in a casual sort of way just how he had measured the distance and had picked out the point of the fat man's jaw. He even went so far as to say that he felt sorry for the poor devil even before he delivered the blow. The fact of the matter is, Stuyvie's wild, terrified swing,--delivered with the eyes not only closed but covered by the left arm,--landed squarely on Mr. McFaddan's jaw. And when the aggressor, after a moment or two of suspense, opened his eyes and lowered his arm, expecting to find his adversary's fist on its irresistible approach toward his nose, there was no Mr. McFaddan in sight;--at least, he was not where he had been the moment before. Mr. McFaddan lay in a crumpled heap against a chair, ten feet away.