'I'm sorry for that, sir,' answered Snap, 'as I'm only a very poor specimen of those Britishers of whom you speak so politely; but I'll tell you what I'll do. I never fired a revolver in my life, but you said just now that Heenan had whipped all England with his fists, and America could lick the old country at that as she can at everything else. Well! we stop at Bismarch for twenty minutes soon, I see. It isn't time for lunch yet, so, if you'll give your revolver to that gentleman to hold, I'll fight you five rounds, if I can last as long, and these gentlemen shall see fair play. Only, if you lick me, mind I am not a typical Britisher.'

The American looked from one to another in an uncomfortable, hesitating way, and then at the long, slight, boyish figure before him. He had gone too far to draw back—he was three stone heavier than his young adversary—so with a blasphemous oath he handed the derringer to his bearded fellow-countryman, adding:

'It don't seem hardly fair, but, if you will have the starch taken out of you, you shall.'

As the pistol-holder left the smoking-room to put the property with which he had been entrusted into his valise he gave Frank Winthrop a sign to follow him. When he and the boy were alone he turned quietly round and said:

'Can your pal fight?'

'Like a demon,' answered Frank; 'he was nearly cock of our school, young as he was.'

'All right, then, I'll not interfere. He is a good plucked one, but tell him to keep out of the man's reach for the first round or two. I don't suppose he has much science, but one blow from a man so much bigger would about finish your friend.'

'I don't believe it,' answered Frank hotly; but the kindly cattle-man only smiled, and, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder, led him back into the smoking-car.

In another ten minutes the warning-bell on the engine began to toll, and the train ran through a street of rough wooden shanties and pulled up just outside the 'city' (a score of houses sometimes make a city out west), by a little prairie lake. In such a city as Bismarch, in the early days of which I am speaking, even half a dozen pistol shots would not have attracted a policeman, principally because no policemen existed. Sometimes a scoundrel became too daring in his villainies even for such tolerant people as the citizens of Bismarch. When this happened someone shot him, though probably he shot several other people first. At the back of the little group of shanties there used to be a long row of palings about eight feet high. 'Hangman's palings' they called these, because upon them, for want of trees, the first vigilance committee had nine months previously (the 'city' was only fifteen months old) hanged its first batch of victims to the necessities of civilised law and order. In such a city as this a quiet spar would cause no sensation, and certainly would not be interrupted, so Snap quickly stripped, as if he was behind the old School chapel, and Mr. Rufus E. Hackett, his opponent, did the same. Stripped of gloves and hat, Hackett looked less at his ease than his young enemy, and would probably be still waiting to begin if the boy had not stepped in and caught him on the point of the nose with a really straight left-hander.

Now, the writer of this story has been hit very frequently upon the nose. After years and years of practice the sensation is still annoying in the extreme. Your eyes fill with water as if you had inadvertently bolted the mustard-pot; the constellations of heaven are seen with alarming clearness; and if you are one of the right sort you come back after that blow like a racquet-ball from the walls of the court. If this is the effect on a nose inured to the rough usage of five-and-twenty years, what must you expect from the owner of a delicately tip-tilted organ, which had been held all its life high above the brutalities of a vulgar world?