“I like that! D—d if I don’t! Come, Clifton—I was wrong, forgive me! give me your hand! By my soul, I like a man that will stand up for—there! by all that’s fatal, I had liked to have tripped again!” “Understand me, sir,” said Archer Clifton, sternly. “You know me to be on the eve of marriage with our cousin. She is my liege lady, and never for one instant in thought, word or deed, has my allegiance swerved from her service. And more, gentlemen, both! A single word touching the fair fame of _her_—of Catherine, I mean—touches _me home_.” They were here overtaken by two or three other gentlemen, and the conversation took another and less perilous turn, as they wandered down towards the mineral spring. After slaking their thirst, the party divided. Major Cabell joined the three latest comers, and Clifton and Fairfax turned towards the farm-house. “You seem to be moody this evening, Archer,” said Frank, after they had pursued their way for some time in silence. “Yes—that foolish jest of Cabell’s has annoyed me. It is villainous! It is diabolical! Such light words, in which a young girl’s fair fame is laughed and jested away, may be thoughtless, but they should be punished with death!” “That’s a harsh sentence!” “A _just_ one!” “You feel this bitterly!” “I DO. For _her_ name has been used! Frank! you believe that if a word of disrespect were to be breathed by any man against my mother, I would lay that man dead at my feet without an instant’s grace?” “Yes! I thoroughly believe that you would send such an one to his last account in a great hurry.” “And if any one were but to _look_ an insult to Catherine, it would rouse all the ferocity of the demon in me to overthrow and trample him to death!” “‘All this I steadfastly believe,’ as the catechism says about total depravity!” “And, Frank! you, yourself have sometimes spoken flippantly of my regard for that girl—never so insultingly as Cabell did just now, else you would not now possess my esteem and friendship—but you have _trifled_ with the subject. Now understand, Frank, that I shall consider it a deep personal affront in future if you repeat it!” “You haven’t heard me joke to you about Kate for a long time.” “No—I certainly have not.” “No—for be hanged if the matter is not getting far too _serious_ for jesting!” “What do you mean?” “Archer! Have you never heard it said that those whom it concerns _first_ to be made acquainted with an injurious report are usually the _last_ to hear it, and when they are _innocent_, they are the more exposed for _being_ innocent, because they never _suspect_ the slander, and never _guard_ against it?” “In Heaven’s name, what do you mean?” “_This_. Cabell’s jest was but the echo of the whole county talk. I have been asked, I suppose, twenty times, by twenty different young men, to tell them all about our adventure upon the mountain.” “That was because _you_ first of all represented it as an adventure.”