"One of the best friends I ever had in this world," and Ardmore's face showed feeling. "He and I charged side by side through the bloodiest battles of our Civil War. I will cheerfully give you my watch, or money in any sum, but the jug--I will part with my life first! And now," concluded Ardmore, "while I should be glad to continue this conversation, my duties call me elsewhere." As he rose, the man stood quickly at his side, menacingly. "Give me thet jug or I'll shoot y'u right hyeh in the street." "No, you wouldn't do that, Old Corduroy. I can see that you are kind and good and you wouldn't shoot down an unarmed man. Besides it would muss up the street." "Y'u took thet jug from my brother by lyin' to 'im. He's telegraphed me to git it, and I'm a-goin' to do it." "Your brother sent you? It was nice of him to ask you to call on me. Why, I've known your brother intimately for years." "Knowed my brother?" and for the first time the man really seemed to doubt himself. "Wheh did y'u know Bill?" "We roomed together at Harvard, that's how I know him, if you force me to it! We're both Hasty Pudding men. Now if you try to bulldoze me further, I'll slap your wrists. So there!" Ardmore entered the hotel deliberately, climbed to his room and locked the door. Then he seized the little brown jug, drew the stopper and poured out a tumblerful of clear white fluid. He took a swallow and shuddered as the fiery liquid seemed instantly to cause every part of his being to tingle. He wiped the tears from his eyes and sat down. The corn-cob stopper had fallen to the floor, and he picked it up and examined it carefully. It had been fitted tightly into the mouth of the jug by the addition of a bit of calico, and he fingered it for a moment with a grin on his face. He was, considering his tranquil past, making history rapidly, and he wished that Griswold, whom he imagined safely away on his law business at Richmond, could see him now, embarked upon a serious adventure, that had already brought him into collision with a seemingly sane man who had threatened him with death. Griswold had been quite right about their woeful incapacity for rising to emergencies, but the episode of the jugs at Kildare was exactly the sort of thing they had discussed time and time again, and it promised well. His throat was raw, as though burned with acid, and it occurred to him for an anxious moment that perhaps he had imbibed a poison intended for the governor. He was about to replace the cob stopper when, to his astonishment, it broke in his fingers, and out fell a carefully folded slip of paper. He carried it to the window and opened it, finding that it was an ordinary telegraph blank on which was written in clear round characters these words: The Appleweight crowd never done you harm. If you have any of them arrested you will be shot down on your own doorstep.