“Put down that gun, Nelson; put it down!” Pole commanded. “Jeff Wade’s deliberately set this trap to draw you into it, an’ the minute you walk down thar it will be a public acknowledgment, an’ he’ll kill you ’fore you can bat an eye.” “No doubt,” said Nelson Floyd; “but the fellow has his rights. I could never draw a free breath if this passes. I owe it to the poor devil, Pole, and I’ll pay. That has always been my rule. I’ll pay. Stand aside!” “I’ll be damned ef I do!” Pole stood his ground firmly. “You must listen to reason. It’s deliberate death.” “Stand out of the way, Pole; don’t make me mad,” said Floyd. “I’m goin’ down. I’d expect him to pay me, and I shall him.” “Stop! you are a fool—you are a hot-headed idiot, Nelson Floyd! Listen to me”—Pole caught the revolver and held on to the barrel of it, while the young merchant clutched the butt—“listen to me, I say. Are you a-goin’ back on a helpless little woman who gets married to a man who believes in her an’ goes away off an’ is on a fair road to happiness—are you, I say, a-goin’ to publicly advertise her shame, an’, no doubt, bust up a contented home?” “Great God, Pole!” exclaimed Floyd as he sank on to the edge of Peters’s bed, “do you think, if I give him satisfaction, it will——?” “Will it? It will be in every paper from Maine to California. Meddlesome devils will mark the articles an’ mail ’em to the gal’s husband. A lot o’ folks did the’r level best to bust up the match anyway, by talkin’ to him about you an’ others.” Nelson Floyd stared at the floor and slowly nodded his head. “He’s caught me in a more degrading trap than the other would have been, Pole,” he declared bitterly. “My conduct has branded me as a coward and left me without power to vindicate myself. That’s one of the ways Providence has of punishing a poor devil. He may have a good impulse, but can’t act upon it owing to the restrictions laid on him by his very sins.” Pole looked down into the store. “Never mind,” he said gloomily. “Wade’s gone.” Floyd dropped the revolver into the drawer of the bureau and went back to his desk. “It’s only a question of time, Pole,” he said. “He suspects me now, but is not sure. It won’t be long before the full story will reach him, and then we’ll have to meet. As far as I am concerned, I’d rather have had it out with him. I’ve swallowed a bitter pill this mornin’, Pole.” “Well, it wasn’t a lead one.” Baker’s habitual sense of humor was rising to the surface. “Most any sort o’ physic is better’n cold metal shoved into the system the wrong way.” There was a step in the store. Pole looked down again. “It’s old Mayhew,” he said. “I’m powerful glad he was late this mornin’, Nelson. The old codger would have seed through that talk.” “Yes, he would have seen through it,” answered Floyd despondently as he opened a big ledger and bent over it. Mayhew trudged toward them, his heavy cane knocking against the long dry-goods counter.