"But--sir?--Why--sir?" "Because," said Tom, looking him full in the face, "because you, calling yourself a gentleman, and being, more shame for you, one by birth, dare to come here, for a foolish vulgar superstition called honour, to ask me, a quiet medical man, to go and be shot at by a man whom you know to be a drunken, profligate, blackguard: simply because, as you know as well as I, I interfered to prevent his insulting a poor helpless girl: and in so doing, was forced to give him what you, if you are (as I believe) a gentleman, would have given him also, in my place." "I don't understand you, sir!" said the lad, blushing all the while, as one honestly conscience-stricken; for Tom had spoken the exact truth, and he knew it. "Don't lie, sir, and tell me that you don't understand; you understand every word which I have spoken, and you know that it is true." "Lie?" "Yes, lie. Look you, sir; I have no wish to fight--" "You will fight, though, whether you wish it or not," said the youth with a hysterical laugh, meant to be defiant. "But--I can snuff a candle; I can split a bullet on a penknife at fifteen paces." "Do you mean to frighten us by boasting? We shall see what you can do when you come on the ground." "Across a handkerchief: but on no other condition; and, unless you will accept that condition, I will assuredly, the next time I see you, be we where we may, treat you as I treated your friend Mr. Trebooze. I'll do it now! Get out of my shop, sir! What do you want here, interfering with my honest business?" And, to the astonishment of Mr. Trebooze's second, Tom vaulted clean over the counter, and rushed at him open-mouthed. Sacred be the honour of the gallant West country: but, "both being friends," as Aristotle has it, "it is a sacred duty to speak the truth." Mr. Creed vanished through the open door. "I rid myself of the fellow jollily," said Tom to Frank that day, after telling him the whole story. "And no credit to me. I saw from the minute he came in there was no fight in him." "But suppose he had accepted--or suppose Trebooze accepts still?" "There was my game--to frighten him. He'll take care Trebooze shan't fight, for he knows that he must fight next. He'll go home and patch the matter up, trust him. Meanwhile, the oaf had not even _savoir faire_ enough to ask for my second. Lucky for me; for I don't know where to have found one, save the lieutenant; and though he would have gone out safe enough, it would have been a bore for the good old fellow." "And," said Prank, utterly taken aback by Tom's business-like levity, "you would actually have stood to shoot, and be shot at, across a handkerchief?" Tom stuck out his great chin, and looked at him with one of his quaint sidelong moues. "You are my very good friend, sir: but not my father-confessor." "I know that: but really--as a mere question of human curiosity--"