“What if I refuse?”

“Why then, sir, I shall give myself the trouble to walk beside you until your sense of decency is happily restored.  If that should not happen between this and your own door, I must leave you for the night and call upon you to-morrow.”

“This is no tone to take among gentlemen.”

“It is the tone you oblige me to take.”

“Come away, Jack!” Hetty besought him in a whisper:  but she knew that he would not.

“Surely,” he said, “after so gross an offence you will lose no more time in begging my sister’s pardon?”

“Look you now, master parson,” growled the offender, “you are thin in the legs, but I am not too drunk to shoot snipe.”  With his gun he menaced John, who did not flinch.

But here Dick Ellison interposed.  “Don’t be a fool, Congdon!  Put up your gun and say you’re sorry, like a gentleman.  Damme”—­Dick in his cups was notoriously quarrelsome and capricious as to the grounds of quarrel—­“she’s my sister, too, for that matter.  And Jack’s my brother:  and begad, he has the right of it.  He’s a pragmatical fellow, but as plucky as ginger, and I love him for it.  Fight him, you’ll have to fight me—­understand?  So up and say you’re sorry, like a man.”

“Oh, if you’re going to take that line, I’m willing enough.”  Mr. Congdon shuffled out an apology.

“That’s right,” Dick Ellison announced.  “Now shake hands on it, like good fellows.  Jack’s as good a man as any of us for all his long coat.”

“Excuse me,” John interrupted coldly, “I have no wish to shake hands with any of you.  I accept for my sister Mr. Congdon’s assurance that he is ashamed of himself, and now you are at liberty to go your way.”

“At liberty!” grumbled one:  but, to Hetty’s surprise, they went.  Jack might not understand women:  he could master men.  For her part she thought he might have shaken hands and parted in good-fellowship.  She listened to the sportsmen’s unsteady retreat.  At a little distance they broke into defiant laughter, but discomfiture was in the sound.

“Come,” said John.  She took his arm and they walked on together towards Wroote.

For a while neither spoke.  Hetty was thinking of a story once told her by her mother:  how that once the Rector, then a young man, had been sitting in Smith’s Coffee House in the City and discussing the Athenian Gazette with his fellow-contributors, when an officer of the Guards, in a box at the far end of the room, kept interrupting them with the foulest swearing.  Mr. Wesley called to the waiter to bring a glass of water.  It was brought.  “Carry this,” he said aloud, “to that gentleman in the red coat, and desire him to rinse his mouth after his oaths.”  The officer rose up in a fury, with hand on sword, but the gentlemen in his box pulled him down.  “Nay, colonel, you gave the first offence.  You know it is an affront to swear before a clergyman.”