“I will horsewhip that powder-monkey!” he said.

“Robert,” said the girl placidly, “you won’t.  You have no horse and no horsewhip, but you have been drinking.  Go from me, sir!  Some one else shall see me home to-night.”

“I will kill the man who takes my place!  Do you dare to speak that way to me?”

He had raised his voice, in his rage, so that some others heard it.  There was a little pause of pressing people, for that was a chivalrous age as to the manner of men to women, and the young officer, just then returning, availed himself of a pretty girl’s dilemma to say: 

“May I assist you, miss?  I presume you are not in very agreeable company.”

“Thank you, sir,” answered Miss Rideau.  “I would be obliged to have some one find my aunt for me; she is here somewhere.”

“Will you accept a stranger’s arm?”

“In this misfortune, I will.”

Dibdo took off the pretty girl, and one of his naval companions, looking after him, exclaimed, “What a genius Dib. is with the ladies!” But the companion, feeling a trembling, unsteady hand upon his arm, turned about and met young Utie’s desperate face.  “I want to know the name of that fellow!” said Utie.

“That is Charles Dibdo,” said the naval companion, “lieutenant of the United States frigate Fox, and I recommend you, my boy, to address him in a civil tone.  For me, I never mind a drunken man.”

Thoroughly demonized now, young Robert Utie turned blindly about for some implement of revenge.  He found it in Tiltock, a fellow-clerk, a novitiate and a ninny, who was visible in the crowd.

“Tiltock, are you a man of honor?”

“I hope so, Bob.”

“Can you carry a challenge?”

“Oh yes!  I guess so, to ’blige a ole friend.”

“Can you write it?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Then take it by word of mouth.  That scoundrel there, Lieutenant Dibdo, has insulted a lady, and me too.  I must have his blood.  Follow him up, and meet me at Gadsby’s with his answer.”

Full of self-importance at this first and safe opportunity to stand upon what is known as “the field of honor,” Tiltock kept the lieutenant in his eye, and took him finally aside and demanded a meeting in the name of Utie.  The naval officer answered that he had simply relieved a lady from a drunken boy; but Tiltock, in the dramatic way common to halcyon old times, refused to accept either “drunken” or “boy” as terms appropriate to “the code,” and pressed for an answer.  In five minutes the naval officer replied, through his naval companion, that having ascertained Mr. Utie to be a gentleman’s son, and he as an United States officer not being able to decline a challenge, the latter was accepted.  The weapons were to be pistols, the place the usual ground at Bladensburg, and the time the afternoon of the next day.