"You are not going to secede, I hope," sneered Wade.
"I am not," said Raed, turning in a passion. "I am, I hope, too good a patriot to be a secessionist, much less a rebel."
For a moment they looked straight at each other. Wade's eyes snapped, and his hands clinched.
"Here, here!—come, none of that!" exclaimed Kit, "or I'll thrash both of you. Wade, you are to blame. You said the first unkind thing. You ought to ask his pardon."
"He needn't do that," said Raed. "I was to blame as well as he."
"Well, that's magnanimous!" exclaimed Wade, suddenly relenting. "Beg'e' pardon, old fellow! I was to blame."
And we all laughed, in spite of the qualms sticking in our throats.