ungs afloat
in that pail of sewage which this criminal here has been prescri--"

"Yes, you are, too. You are going to be good, and do everything I tell
you, like a dear," and she tapped his cheek affectionately with her
finger. "Rowena, take the prescription and go in the kitchen and hunt up
the things and lay them out for me. I'll sit up with my patient the rest
of the night, doctor; I can't trust Nancy, she couldn't make Luigi take
the medicine. Of course, you'll drop in again during the day. Have you
got any more directions?"

"No, I believe not, Aunt Patsy. If I don't get in earlier, I'll be along
by early candle-light, anyway. Meantime, don't allow him to get out of
his bed."

Angelo said, with calm determination:

"I shall be baptized at two o'clock. Nothing but death shall prevent
me."

The doctor said nothing aloud, but to himself he said:

"Why, this chap's got a manly side, after all! Physically he's a coward,
but morally he's a lion. I'll go and tell the others about this; it will
raise him a good deal in their estimation--and the public will follow
their lead, of course."

Privately, Aunt Patsy applauded too, and was proud of Angelo's courage
in the moral field as she was of Luigi's in the field of honor.

The boy Henry was troubled, but the boy Joe said, inaudibly, and
gratefully, "We're all honky, after all; and no postponement on account
of the weather."

CHAPTER VIII. BAPTISM OF THE BETTER HALF

By nine o'clock the town was humming with the news of the midnight duel,
and there were but two opinions about it: one, that Luigi's pluck in
the field was most praiseworthy and Angelo's flight most scandalous; the
other, that Angelo's courage in flying the field for conscience' sake
was as fine and creditable as was Luigi's in holding the field in the
face of the bullets. The one opinion was held by half of the town, the
other one was maintained by the other half. The division was clean and
exact, and it made two parties, an Angelo party and a Luigi party. The
twins had suddenly become popular idols along with Pudd'nhead Wilson,
and haloed with a glory as intense as his. The children talked the duel
all the way to Sunday-school, their elders talked it all the way to
church, the choir discussed it behind their red curtain, it usurped the
place of pious thought in the "nigger gallery."

By noon the doctor had added the news, and spread it, that Count Angelo,
in spite of his wound and all warnin