k here," said I, "I don't mind much about losing that life you talk
so much of; but I mean to lose it the way I want to, and that is,
putting a stop to all this beastliness."

He talked a while about his duty to the firm; I minded not at all, I was
secure of victory. He was but waiting to capitulate, and looked about
for any potent to relieve the strain. In the gush of light from the
bedroom door I spied a cigar-holder on the desk. "That is well
coloured," said I.

"Will you take a cigar?" said he.

I took it and held it up unlighted. "Now," said I, "you promise me."

"I promise you you won't have any trouble from natives that have drunk
at my place," he replied.

"That is all I ask," said I, and showed it was not by immediately
offering to try his stock.

So far as it was anyway critical our interview here ended. Mr. Muller
had thenceforth ceased to regard me as an emissary from his rivals,
dropped his defensive attitude, and spoke as he believed. I could make
out that he would already, had he dared, have stopped the sale himself.
Not quite daring, it may be imagined how he resented the idea of
interference from those who had (by his own statement) first led him on,
then deserted him in the breach, and now (sitting themselves in safety)
egged him on to a new peril, which was all gain to them, all loss to
him. I asked him what he thought of the danger from the feast.

"I think worse of it than any of you," he answered. "They were shooting
around here last night, and I heard the balls too. I said to myself,
'That's bad.' What gets me is why you should be making this row up at
your end. I should be the first to go."

It was a thoughtless wonder. The consolation of being second is not
great: the fact, not the order of going--there was our concern.

Scott talks moderately of looking forward to a time of fighting "with a
feeling that resembled pleasure." The resemblance seems rather an
identity. In modern life, contact is ended; man grows impatient of
endless manoeuvres; and to approach the fact, to find ourselves where
we can push our advantage home, and stand a fair risk, and see at last
what we are made of, stirs the blood. It was so at least with all my
family, who bubbled with delight at the approach of trouble; and we sat
deep into the night like a pack of schoolboys, preparing the revolvers
and arranging plans against the morrow. It promised certainly to be a
busy and eventful day. The Old Men were to be sum