Even while he was speaking, Clarence, with his quickened ear, heard the words, “One of Hamilton Brant’s pups” “Just like his father,” from the group around the dead man.  He did not hesitate, but walked coolly towards them.  Yet a certain fierce pride—­which he had never known before—­stirred in his veins as their voices hushed and they half recoiled before him.

“Am I to understand from my second, gentlemen,” he said, looking round the group, “that you are not satisfied?”

“The fight was square enough,” said Pinckney’s second in some embarrassment, “but I reckon that he,” pointing to the dead man, “did not know who you were.”

“Do you mean that he did not know that I was the son of a man proficient in the use of arms?”

“I reckon that’s about it,” returned the second, glancing at the others.

“I am glad to say, sir, that I have a better opinion of his courage,” said Clarence, lifting his hat to the dead body as he turned away.

Yet he was conscious of no remorse, concern, or even pity in his act.  Perhaps this was visible in his face, for the group appeared awed by this perfection of the duelist’s coolness, and even returned his formal parting salutation with a vague and timid respect.  He thanked the deputy, regained the hotel, saddled his horse and galloped away.

But not towards the Rancho.  Now that he could think of his future, that had no place in his reflections; even the episode of Susy was forgotten in the new and strange conception of himself and his irresponsibility which had come upon him with the killing of Pinckney and the words of his second.  It was his dead father who had stiffened his arm and directed the fatal shot!  It was hereditary influences—­which others had been so quick to recognize—­that had brought about this completing climax of his trouble.  How else could he account for it that he—­a conscientious, peaceful, sensitive man, tender and forgiving as he had believed himself to be—­could now feel so little sorrow or compunction for his culminating act?  He had read of successful duelists who were haunted by remorse for their first victim; who retained a terrible consciousness of the appearance of the dead man; he had no such feeling; he had only a grim contentment in the wiped-out inefficient life, and contempt for the limp and helpless body.  He suddenly recalled his callousness as a boy when face to face with the victims of the Indian massacre, his sense of fastidious superciliousness in the discovery of the body of Susy’s mother!—­surely it was the cold blood of his father influencing him ever thus.  What had he to do with affection, with domestic happiness, with the ordinary ambitions of man’s life—­whose blood was frozen at its source!  Yet even with this very thought came once more the old inconsistent tenderness he had as a boy lavished upon the almost unknown and fugitive father who had forsaken his childish companionship, and remembered him only by secret gifts.  He remembered