"You mean
he's too great a fool?"

"I mean just the reverse. He's got too much in him."

"But--you know, dear, what they say about him--that he's--er--a bit of a
funkstick."

"Bit of a funkstick! Pooh! Look at his face, Lucy. How can a man with
a face like that have an atom of cowardice in his composition? Why,
it's too ridiculous." And the whole-souled contempt which Clare infused
into this vindication would have inspired wild exultation in the breast
of any one of her multifold adorers near and far, had it been uttered in
his own behalf. Yet her acquaintance with the object thereof was of the
slightest. "Well, you know they say that one evening there was a bit of
a row on over at the hotel--horrid, quarrelsome, fighting creatures men
are--and someone insulted Lamont, or trod on his toes, or something,
and, when he objected, the other wanted him to fight; and he quite
climbed down."

"I don't believe it--or, at any rate, the motive they put upon it," said
Clare decidedly. "People have a way of piling on to their stories in
the most recklessly top-heavy manner. In all probability he was more
than the other's match, and kept out of it on that account."

"You make an effective champion, Clare," laughed the other,
mischievously. "Well I don't know the ins and outs of it. Dick knows
more about it than I do."

"Oho! What does Dick know more about than you do?" hailed a voice
outside the window, and its owner immediately entered, accompanied by
another man. "Anyhow, that's a big bit of news to start with--that Dick
should know more about anything under the sun than you do. Here's
Driffield, and he's going to stay lunch."

"Dick, don't be silly. How do you do, Mr Driffield," greeting the
Native Commissioner. "We were talking about Mr Lamont, and what they
say about him. Clare says she doesn't believe a word of it, and I was
saying you knew more about it than I do, Dick."

"Do you mean the breeze at Foster's?"

"Yes."

"Well, he did climb down. There's no doubt about it. And the funny
part of it is, that with the gloves on there's hardly a man anywhere in
these parts who can touch him."

"There you are, Lucy," cried Clare triumphantly. "Didn't I tell you it
was because he was more than the other's match?"

"Well, it hadn't got a look that way at the time, and that was what
struck everybody who saw it. Certainly it struck me," replied
Fullerton. "But the next time you girls start taking awa