o have no
blood on the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making
up his mind about something, too. Jane, she says:

"YOU a better man? YOU? You think you've been a model husband just
because you've never beaten me, don't you?"

"No," says the perfessor, "I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been
a worse fool, maybe, than if I HAD beaten you." Then he turns to Henry
and he says:

"Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in
the papers, doesn't it? Well, you just wait for me." With which he gets
up and trots out, and I hearn him running down stairs to his labertory.

Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane
a-looking at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some
kind of a strong action now to show Jane he is a great man. But he don't
do it. And Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects
it. And me, I'm getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, "What is
that there perfessor up to now? Whatever it is, it ain't like no one
else. He is looney, that perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too.
I wonder if they is any one that ain't looney sometimes?" I been
around the country a good 'eal, too, and seen and hearn of some awful
remarkable things, and I never seen no one that wasn't more or less
looney when the SEARCH US THE FEMM comes into the case. Which is a Dago
word I got out'n a newspaper and it means: "Who was the dead gent's lady
friend?" And we all set and sweat and got the fidgets waiting fur that
perfessor to come back.

Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin onto his face and a pill box
in his hand. They was two pills in the box. He says, placid and chilly:

"Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion. This is the age of science. All the
same, the one that gets her has got to fight for her. If she isn't worth
fighting for, she isn't worth having. Here are two pills. I made 'em
myself. One has enough poison in it to kill a regiment when it gets to
working well--which it does fifteen minutes after it is taken. The other
one has got nothing harmful in it. If you get the poison one, I keep
her. If I get it, you can have her. Only I hope you will wait long
enough after I'm dead so there won't be any scandal around town."

Henry, he never said a word. He opened his mouth, but nothing come of
it. When he done that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his cheek
on the inside like a piece of sand-paper. He was scare