There appeared next morning in Tom’s shop a new phenomenon.  A smart youth, dressed in what he considered to be the newest London fashion; but which was really that translation of last year’s fashion which happened to be current in the windows of the Bodmin tailors.  Tom knew him by sight and name,—­one Mr. Creed, a squireen like Trebooze, and an especial friend of Trebooze’s, under whose tutelage he had learned to smoke cavendish assiduously from the age of fifteen, thereby improving neither his stature, nor his digestion, his nerves, nor the intelligence of his countenance.

He entered with a lofty air, and paused awhile as he spoke.

“Is it possible,” said Tom to himself, “that Trebooze has sent me a challenge?  It would be too good fun.  I’ll wait and see.”  So he went on rolling pills.

“I say, sir,” quoth the youth, who had determined, as an owner of land, to treat the doctor duly de haut en bas, and had a vague notion that a liberal use of the word “sir” would both help thereto, and be consonant with professional style of duel diplomacy, whereof he had read in novels.

Tom turned slowly, and then took a long look at him over the counter through halfshut eye-lids, with chin upraised, as if he had been suddenly afflicted with short sight; and worked on meanwhile steadily at his pills.

“That is, I wish—­to speak to you, sir—­ahem—!” went on Mr. Creed; being gradually but surely discomfited by Tom’s steady gaze.

“Don’t trouble yourself, sir:  I see your case in your face.  A slight nervous affection—­will pass as the digestion improves.  I will make you up a set of pills for the night; but I should advise a little ammonia and valerian at once.  May I mix it?”

“Sir! you mistake me, sir!”

“Not in the least; you have brought me a challenge from Mr. Trebooze.”

“I have, sir!” said the youth with a grand air, at once relieved by having the awful words said for him, and exalted by the dignity of his first, and perhaps last, employment in that line.

“Well, sir,” said Tom deliberately, “Mr. Trebooze does me a kindness for which I cannot sufficiently thank him, and you also, as his second.  It is full six months since I fought, and I was getting hardly to know myself again.”

“You will have to fight now, sir!” said the youth, trying to brazen off by his discourtesy increasing suspicion that he had “caught a Tartar.”

“Of course, of course.  And of course, too, I fight you afterwards.”

“I—­I, sir?  I am Mr. Trebooze’s friend, his second, sir.  You do not seem to understand, sir!”

“Pardon me, young gentleman,” said Tom, in a very quiet, determined voice; “it is I who have a right to tell you that you do not understand in such matters as these.  I had fought my man, and more than one of them, while you were eating blackberries in a short jacket.”

“What do you mean, sir?” quoth the youth in fury; and began swearing a little.