"'I suppose you understand what that means?'
"Then in the silence he stooped, picked up his whip and hat, and looking straight before him strode out of the hall. I followed automatically.
"The door behind us shut out a tremendous roar of laughter, in which could be distinguished cries of 'You're done for now, Watkins!' 'Better make your will, old chap!' We were hardly clear of the building before the whole meeting adjourned with a rush, pounding down the stairs with such impetuosity that it is a wonder they didn't carry the rickety structure along with them.
"Shades of John Harvard and Cotton Mather! A duel was to be fought in Harvard College! The rumor flew from the college pump to the tavern; it sprang from lip to lip—from window to window; sneaked by professors' houses in silence; and burst into garrulity upon the steps of Hollis and Stoughton. If you had asked one from the jocular groups gathered in front of the different buildings and upon the gravel paths what was to pay, he would probably have replied with a twinkle in his eye, 'Virginia has seceded.'
"I must confess to you that I felt like a fool. It was the same feeling that I had experienced in a lesser degree when my cavalier had kissed the hand of old Mrs. Podridge, but now it was clear I was playing Sancho Panza in earnest. I had followed Dick to the room and pleaded with him in vain. He was impervious to argument. There could be only one thing done under the circumstances. There was no question about it at all. He failed utterly to comprehend my alleged attitude in the case, or at any rate pretended to do so. Why hadn't he thrashed Watkins then and there? Simply because by so doing he'd have made himself nothing more nor less than a common brawler. It was not a case of a street fight, but of insulting a man's honor.
"Of course I might have thrown him over. But somehow I couldn't leave Randolph to face the music all alone, and I knew well enough that laughter would be far harder for him to bear than the actual hatred or disapproval of his associates. And then he was going away the following morning and I might never see him again.
"I'd hoped, and in fact expected, that Watkins would laugh in my face when I submitted Randolph's challenge. It would have been quite in keeping with the fellow's character and past performances, but he took the wind entirely out of my sails by the gravity with which he listened to what I had to say, and unhesitatingly chose 'pistols at twenty paces.' Up to that time I'd felt merely that Dick had made an ass of himself and had rather unnecessarily dragged me into it, but now the other aspect of the thing—that I might become the accessory to a homicide—caused me a feeling of revolt against having anything to do with the affair.
"I completed my arrangements with Watkins's second, a fellow named Scott, as quickly as possible, leaving to him most of the details. And then Dick and I took a long ride together in the country, supping at a farmhouse and not reaching home until after nine o'clock.
"Randolph roused me from fitful slumbers early next morning by holding the lamp to my face, and I saw that he was fully dressed.
"'You haven't been to bed at all!' I cried in reproach.