My father stood up and bowed, bareheaded.

My grandfather struck his hat and bobbed.

'Mr. Beltham, I trust I see you well.'

'Better, sir, when I've got rid of a damned unpleasant bit o' business.'

'I offer you my hearty assistance.'

'Do you? Then step down and come into my bailiff's.'

'I come, sir.'

My father alighted from the carriage. The squire cast his gouty leg to
be quit of his horse, but not in time to check my father's advances and
ejaculations of condolence.

'Gout, Mr. Beltham, is a little too much a proof to us of a long line of
ancestry.'

His hand and arm were raised in the form of a splint to support the
squire, who glared back over his cheekbone, horrified that he could
not escape the contact, and in too great pain from arthritic throes to
protest: he resembled a burglar surprised by justice. 'What infernal
nonsense,... fellow talking now?' I heard him mutter between his
hoppings and dancings, with one foot in the stirrup and a toe to earth,
the enemy at his heel, and his inclination half bent upon swinging to
the saddle again.

I went to relieve him. 'Damn!... Oh, it's you,' said he.

The squire directed Uberly, acting as his groom, to walk his horse
up and down the turf fronting young Tom Eckerthy's cottage, and me to
remain where I was; then hobbled up to the door, followed at a leisurely
march by my father. The door opened. My father swept the old man in
before him, with a bow and flourish that admitted of no contradiction,
and the door closed on them. I caught a glimpse of Uberly screwing his
wrinkles in a queer grimace, while he worked his left eye and thumb
expressively at the cottage, by way of communicating his mind to Samuel,
Captain Bulsted's coachman; and I became quite of his opinion as to the
nature of the meeting, that it was comical and not likely to lead to
much. I thought of the princess and of my hope of her depending upon
such an interview as this. From that hour when I stepped on the sands
of the Continent to the day of my quitting them, I had been folded in a
dream: I had stretched my hands to the highest things of earth, and
here now was the retributive material money-question, like a keen
scythe-blade!

The cottage-door continued shut. The heaths were darkening. I heard a
noise of wheels, and presently the unmistakable voice of Janet saying,
'That must be Harry.' She was driving my aunt Dorothy. Both of them
hushed at hearing that the momentous duel was in