“Very well; I agree to that.  Arrange the time and place with my second, Mr. Rattleton.”

Frank sat down, picked up an illustrated paper, and seemed deeply interested in the pictures.

Ditson drew Rattleton aside.

“My principal,” said he, swelling with importance, “demands that this meeting take place at once.”

“Great Scott!” exploded Harry.  “I object to this sort of business.  It is outrageous!  If one of them should be seriously wounded, what excuse can be made?”

“We’ll find some excuse that will go.”

“But what if one of them should be killed?”

“I hardly think anything as serious as that will occur.”

“But should it, there would be an investigation, and expulsion and disgrace, if nothing worse, would overtake us.”

“Oh, well, if you are afraid, just go back and tell Mr. Merriwell to apologize here and now, and I think Mr. Diamond will let him off.”

Harry looked at Merriwell and then shook his head.

“He’ll never do that,” he said, hoarsely.  “We’ll have to arrange this duel.  There is no other way for it.”

Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three blood runs hot and swift in the veins of a youth.  It is then that he will do many wild and reckless things—­things which will cause him to stand appalled when he considers them in after years.

Frank believed that in order to retain his own self respect and the respect of his comrades he must meet Diamond and give him satisfaction in any manner he might designate.

But there was another reason why Frank was so willing to meet the Virginian.  Merriwell was an expert fencer.  At Fardale he had been the champion of the school, and he had taken some lessons while traveling.  He had thoroughly studied the trick of disarming his adversary, a trick which is known to every French fencing master, but is thought little of by them.

He believed that he could repeatedly disarm Diamond.

His adventures in various parts of the world had made him somewhat less cautious than he naturally would have been and so he trusted everything to his ability to get the best of the Virginian.

Roland Ditson longed to force Merriwell to squeal.  He did not fancy Frank knew anything of fencing, and he thought Merriwell would soon lose his nerve when he saw himself toyed with by Diamond.

And Diamond had promised not to seriously wound the fellow he hated.

The meeting was arranged as quietly as possible, and the freshmen who were to witness it slipped out of Billy’s by twos and threes and strode away.

Thirty minutes later, in a small, stuffy room, two lads, with their coats and vests off and their sleeves turned back, faced each other, rapiers in hand.

“Ready, gentlemen!” called Ditson.

They made ready.

“On guard!”

The position was assumed.

Then came the command that set them at it.