he whispered to me, chuckling and holding out his hand.

It was full of money.

"But that's stealing, Nick," I said, frightened.

"Of course I'll give it back," he whispered indignantly.

Instantly there came loud words and the scraping of chairs within the
room, and a woman's scream. I heard Mr. Riddle's voice say thickly, amid
the silence that followed:--

"Mr. Darnley, you're a d--d thief, sir."

"You shall answer for this, when you are sober, sir," said Mr. Darnley.

Then there came more scraping of chairs, all the company talking
excitedly at once. Nick and I scrambled to the ground, and we did the
very worst thing we could possibly have done,--we took the ladder away.

There was little sleep for me that night. I had first of all besought
Nick to go up into the drawing-room and give the money back. But some
strange obstinacy in him resisted.

"'Twill serve Harry well for what he did to-day," said he.

My next thought was to find Mr. Mason, but he was gone up the river to
visit a sick parishioner. I had seen enough of the world to know that
gentlemen fought for less than what had occurred in the drawing-room that
evening. And though I had neither love nor admiration for Mr. Riddle,
and though the stout gentleman was no friend of mine, I cared not to see
either of them killed for a prank. But Nick would not listen to me, and
went to sleep in the midst of my urgings.

"Davy," said he, pinching me, "do you know what you are?"

"No," said I.

"You're a granny," he said. And that was the last word I could get out
of him. But I lay awake a long time, thinking. Breed had whiled away
for me one hot morning in Charlestown with an account of the gentry and
their doings, many of which he related in an awed whisper that I could
not understand. They were wild doings indeed to me. But strangest of
all seemed the duels, conducted with a decorum and ceremony as rigorous
as the law.

"Did you ever see a duel, Breed?" I had asked.

"Yessah," said Breed, dramatically, rolling the whites of his eyes.

"Where?"

"Whah? Down on de riveh bank at Temple Bow in de ea'ly mo'nin'! Dey
mos' commonly fights at de dawn."

Breed had also told me where he was in hiding at the time, and that was
what troubled me. Try as I would, I could not remember. It had sounded
like Clam Shell. That I recalled, and how Breed had looked out at the
sword-play through the cracks of the closed shutters, agonized between
fear of ghosts within a