'I am going. I only wished to apologise to you before I went. That's all.' And my affectionate brother followed his friends. CHAPTER XXVII A WHIPPING BOY I had won all along the line. But I wasn't exhilarated. Fighting's fun; and in a certain kind of row I'm happiest. I can lay my hand on my heart and say I believe that I was born a fighting man. A forlorn hope and a smile to my mind go together. And it's when I'm facing fearful odds, not for the ashes of my fathers and the temples of my gods, but for amusement only, that I'm surest I'm alive. Yet when those gentlemen retired one after the other, leaving me in possession of the field, I couldn't have bet sixpence that a glass of brandy wouldn't have acted as a pick-me-up. And when a man's reduced to alcoholic bracers there's something ails him somewhere. The scrap with Acrodato was good business, and the capture of his lordship's pen-slip was an unmitigated joy. Bluff; all bluff. An apt example of how conscience can knock out the toughest subjects. I had had reason to suspect the worst in that business down at Birmingham, but I had never got beyond suspicion. The accessories were invention--pure invention. If he had compelled me to produce that statement, or the other trifles of which I had so boldly boasted, I should have had to plead that a thief had broken in to steal; or that they had got themselves mislaid. Therefore the capture of that bill was a pure delight. What worried me was the character of the man whose shoes I occupied. In San Francisco I realised that he was trash, but only in the halls of his fathers did it come home to me what trash he was. He couldn't have been long in the world when he concluded to travel, but he had been long enough to make his name, even after the lapse of fifteen years, stink in men's nostrils. Yes; and women's. It was hard that that man's reputation should be mine. It was because he was that kind of man that people--including my own brother--were so ready to conclude that I was Mr. Babbacombe--perceiving that the trick he had played was quite in keeping with his lordship's character. Figuring as the Marquis of Twickenham wasn't the soft snap I had hoped. I felt that there wasn't a man or woman in the house, from old Gayer downward, who didn't despise me; who couldn't tell some pretty tale to my discredit. Foster regarded me as a mixture of clumsy rogue and cowardly fool. When I gave him to understand that that was not a point of view which I appreciated, although he gave no outward and visible smile, I knew that at the bottom of his heart he smiled. I could have kicked the man. But then if I had once started I should have had to kick so many.