"Don't trouble yourself, sir: I see your case in your face. A slight nervous affection--will pass as the digestion improves. I will make you up a set of pills for the night; but I should advise a little ammonia and valerian at once. May I mix it?" "Sir! you mistake me, sir!" "Not in the least; you have brought me a challenge from Mr. Trebooze." "I have, sir!" said the youth with a grand air, at once relieved by having the awful words said for him, and exalted by the dignity of his first, and perhaps last, employment in that line. "Well, sir," said Tom deliberately, "Mr. Trebooze does me a kindness for which I cannot sufficiently thank him, and you also, as his second. It is full six months since I fought, and I was getting hardly to know myself again." "You will have to fight now, sir!" said the youth, trying to brazen off by his discourtesy increasing suspicion that he had "caught a Tartar." "Of course, of course. And of course, too, I fight you afterwards." "I--I, sir? I am Mr. Trebooze's friend, his second, sir. You do not seem to understand, sir!" "Pardon me, young gentleman," said Tom, in a very quiet, determined voice; "it is I who have a right to tell you that you do not understand in such matters as these. I had fought my man, and more than one of them, while you were eating blackberries in a short jacket." "What do you mean, sir?" quoth the youth in fury; and began swearing a little. "Simple fact. Are you not about twenty-three years old?" "What is that to you, sir?" "No business of mine, of course. You may be growing into your second childhood for aught I care: but if, as I guess, you are about twenty-three, I, as I know, am thirty-six: then I fought my first duel when you were five years old, and my tenth, I should say, when you were fifteen; at which time, I suppose, you were not ashamed either of the jacket or the blackberries." "You will find me a man now, sir, at all events," said Creed, justly wroth at what was, after all, a sophism; for if a man is not a man at twenty, he never will be one. "_Tant mieux_. You know, I suppose, that as the challenged, I have the choice of weapons?" "Of course, sir," said Creed, in an off-hand generous tone, because he did not very clearly know. "Then, sir, I always fight across a handkerchief. You will tell Mr. Trebooze so; he is, I really believe, a brave man, and will accept the terms. You will tell yourself the same, whether you be a brave man or not." The youth lost the last words in those which went before them. He was no coward: would have stood up to be shot at, at fifteen paces, like any one else; but the deliberate butchery of fighting across a handkerchief-- "Do I understand you, sir?" "That depends on whether you are clever enough, or not, to comprehend your native tongue. Across a handkerchief, I say, do you hear that?" And Tom rolled on at his pills. "I do." "And when I have fought him, I fight you!" And the pills rolled steadily at the same pace.