“Mr. Beverley,” said I, “what ails you?”

For a moment he did not speak, then answered, with the same strange look: 

“Sir Jasper Trent—­is my cousin, sir.”

My negro-head pipe slipped suddenly, and fell into the grass, happily without injury.

“Indeed!” said I.

“Can you not see what this means, sir?” he went on hurriedly.  “Jasper will fight.”

“Indeed,” said I again, “I fear so.”

“Jasper was always a bit of a fish, and with no particular affection for his graceless kinsman, but I am his only relative; and—­and he hardly knows one end of a pistol from the other, while your cousin is a dead shot.”

“My cousin!” I exclaimed; “then if was he—­to be sure I saw only his back.”

“Sir Jasper is unmarried—­has no relations but myself,” my companion repeated, with the same fixed intentness of look; “can you appreciate, I wonder, what this would mean to me?”

“Rank, and fortune, and London,” said I.

“No, no!” He sprang to his feet, and threw wide his ragged arms with a swift, passionate gesture.  “It means Life—­and Helen.  My God!” he went on, speaking almost in a whisper, “I never knew how much I wanted her—­how much I had wilfully tossed aside—­till now!  I never realized the full misery of it all—­till now!  I could have starved very well in time, and managed it as quietly as most other ruined fools.  But now—­to see the chance of beginning again, of coming back to self-respect and—­Helen, my God!” And, of a sudden, he cast himself upon his face, and so lay, tearing up the grass by handfuls.  Then, almost as suddenly, he was upon his feet again, and had caught up his hat.  “Sir,” said he somewhat shamefacedly, smoothing its ruffled nap with fingers that still quivered, “pray forgive that little ebullition of feeling; it is over—­quite over, but your tidings affected me, and I am not quite myself at times; as I have already said, turnips and unripe blackberries are not altogether desirable as a diet.”

“Indeed,” said I, “you seemed strangely perturbed.”

“Mr. Vibart,” said he, staring very hard at the battered hat, and turning it round and round, “Mr. Vibart, the devil is surprisingly strong in some of us.”

“True,” said I.

“My cousin, Sir Jasper, is a bookish fellow, and, as I have said, a fool where anything else is in question; if this meeting is allowed to take place, I feel that he will most certainly be killed, and his death would mean a new life—­more than life to me.”

“Yes,” said I.

“And for a moment, Mr. Vibart, I was tempted to sit down in the ditch again, and let things take their course.  The devil, I repeat, is remarkably strong in some of us.”

“Then what is your present intention?”

“I am going to London to find Sir Maurice Vibart—­to stop this duel.”

“Impossible!” said I.

“But you see, sir, it so happens that I am possessed of certain intelligence which might make Sir Maurice’s existence in England positively untenable.”