“And why not, I should like to know?” shouted the professor, towering with indignation. “Was I doing anything to be ashamed of? And what are you doing here, pray, with loaded revolvers in your hands?--Hallo! who’s this?” he exclaimed, as Don Miguel advanced doubtfully out of the gloom. “Senor de Mendoza, as I’m a sinner! and armed, too! Well, really! Are you two out on a murdering expedition?--Oho!” he went on, in a changed tone, glancing keenly from one to another: “methinks I see the bottom of this mystery. You have ridden forth, like the champions of romance, to do doughty deeds upon each other!--Is it not so, Don Miguel?” he demanded, turning his fierce spectacles suddenly on that young man. Don Miguel, ignoring a secret gesture from Freeman, admitted that he had been on the point of expunging the latter from this mortal sphere. The professor chuckled sarcastically. “I see! Blood! Wounded honor! The code!--But, by the way, I don’t see your seconds! Where are your seconds?” “My dear sir,” said Freeman, “I assure you it’s all a mistake. We just happened to meet at the gen--er--happened to meet, and were riding home together----” “Now, listen to me, Harvey,” the professor interrupted, holding up an expository finger. “You have known me since some ten years, I think; and I have known you. You were a clever boy in your studies; but it was your foible to fancy yourself cleverer than you were. Acting under that delusion, you pitted yourself against me on one or two occasions; and I leave it to your candid recollection whether you or I had the best of the encounter. You call yourself a man, now; but I make bold to say that the--discrepancy, let us call it--between you and me remains as conspicuous as ever it was. I see through you, sir, much more clearly than, by this light, I can see you. I am fond of you, Harvey; but I feel nothing but contempt for your present attitude. In the first place, conscious as you are of your skill with that weapon, you know that this affair--even had seconds been present--would have been, not a duel, but an assassination. You acted like a coward!--I say it, sir, like a coward!--and I hope you may live to be as much ashamed of yourself as I am now ashamed for you. Secondly, your conduct, considered in its relations to--to certain persons whom I will not name, is that of a boor and a blackguard. Suppose you had accomplished the cowardly murder--the cowardly murder, I said, sir--that you were bent upon to-night. Do you think that would be a grateful and acceptable return for the courtesy and confidence that have been shown you in that house?--a house, sir, to which I myself introduced you, under the mistaken belief that you were a gentleman, or, at least, could feign gentlemanly behavior! But I won’t--my feelings won’t allow me to enlarge further upon this point. But allow me to add, in the third place, that you have shown yourself a purblind donkey. Actually, you haven’t sense enough to know the