wonder.

By this time the two doctors, with the pair of hackney-drivers, seeing
that something had turned up out of the common course, parting from the
carriages, had also come upon the ground; the jarveys, in sympathy with
Cris Rock, crying, "Shame!" In the Crescent City even a cabman has
something of chivalry in his nature--the surroundings teach and invite
it--and now the detected scoundrel seemed without a single friend. For
he--hitherto acting as such, seeing the imposture, which had been alike
practised on himself, stepped up to his principal, and looking him
scornfully in the face, hissed out the word "_Lache_!"

Then turning to Kearney and Crittenden he added--

"Let that be my apology to you, gentlemen. If you're not satisfied with
it, I'm willing and ready to take his place--with either of you."

"It's perfectly satisfactory, monsieur," frankly responded the
Kentuckian, "so far as I'm concerned. And I think I may say as much for
Captain Kearney."

"Indeed, yes," assented the Irishman, adding: "We absolve you, sir, from
all blame. It's evident you knew nothing of that shining panoply till
now;" as he spoke, pointing to the steel shirt.

The French-Creole haughtily, but courteously, bowed thanks. Then,
facing once more to Santander, and repeating the "_Lache_" strode
silently away from the ground.

They had all mistaken the character of the individual, who, despite a
somewhat forbidding face, was evidently a man of honour, as he had
proved himself.

"What d'ye weesh me to do wi' him?" interrogated the Texan, still
keeping Santander in firm clutch. "Shed we shoot him or hang him?"

"Hang!" simultaneously shouted the two hackney-drivers, who seemed as
bitter against the disgraced duellist as if he had "bilked" them of a
fare.

"So I say, too," solemnly pronounced the Texan; "shootin's too good for
the like o' him; a man capable o' sech a cowardly, murderous trick
desarves to die the death o' a dog."

Then, with an interrogating look at Crittenden, he added: "Which is't to
be, lootenant?"

"Neither, Cris," answered the Kentuckian. "If I mistake not, the
_gentleman_ has had enough punishment without either. If he's got so
much as a spark of shame or conscience--"

"Conshence!" exclaimed Rock, interrupting. "Sech a skunk don't know the
meanin' o' the word. Darn ye!" he continued, turning upon his prisoner,
and shaking him till the links in the steel shirt chinked, "I feel as if
I ked drive