he
ground of safeguarding the rights of a young drunkard like Willits,
who didn't know when he had had enough, might very well do for a
self-appointed autocrat like Rutter, she maintained, but some equally
respectable people would have him know that they disagreed with him.

"Just like Talbot Rutter," she exclaimed in her outspoken, decided
way--"no sense of proportion. High-tempered, obstinate as a mule, and
a hundred years--yes, five hundred years behind his time. And he--could
have stopped it all too if he had listened to me. Did you ever hear
anything so stupid as his turning Harry--the sweetest boy who ever
lived--out of doors, and in a pouring rain, for doing what he would have
done himself! Oh, this is too ridiculous--too farcical. Why, you can't
conceive of the absurdity of it all--nobody can! Gilbert was there and
told me every word of it. You would have thought he was a grand duke or
a pasha punishing a slave--and the funniest thing about it is that he
believes he is a pasha. Oh--I have no patience with such contemptible
family pride, and that's what is at the bottom of it."

Some of the back county aristocrats, on the other hand--men who lived by
themselves, who took their cue from Alexander Hamilton, Lee, and Webb,
and believed in the code as the only means of arbitrating a difficulty
of any kind between gentlemen--stoutly defended the Lord of Moorlands.

"Rutter did perfectly right to chuck the young whelp out of doors.
Outrageous, sir--never is done--nothing less than murder. Ought to be
prosecuted for challenging a man under his own roof--and at night too.
No toss-up for position, no seconds except a parcel of boys. Vulgar,
sir--infernally vulgar, sir. I haven't the honor of Colonel Rutter's
acquaintance--but if I had I'd tell him so--served the brat right--damn
him!"

Richard Horn was equally emphatic, but in a far different way. Indeed he
could hardly restrain himself when discussing it.

"I can think of nothing my young boy Oliver would or could do when he
grows up," he exclaimed fiercely--his eyes flashing, "which would shut
him out of his home and his dear mother's care. The duel is a relic of
barbarism and should be no longer tolerated; it is mob law, really,
and indefensible, with two persons defying the statutes instead of a
thousand. But Rutter is the last man in the world to take the stand he
has, and I sincerely regret his action. There are many bitter days ahead
of him."

Nor were the p