“I’se good to-day, pappy,” he said. “I’se very good. I’se did what mammy told. She said, ‘Go to pappy,’ and I’se goed.”
Mathews, his hands clenched, took a step in the direction of Mr. Long, and Dick took a step in the direction of Mathews.
“Coward!” said the last named. “Coward! this is how you would shirk the fight that you owe me. You have brought them here.”
“Yes, I brought them here—all your family,” said Mr. Long. “And—yes, I own to being a coward; I own that I shrink from standing up with a deadly weapon in my hand before the husband of an estimable lady and the father of an innocent child. Captain Mathews, you are aware of the fact that I am acquainted with some compromising incidents in your past life. I do not wish you ill, sir. I implore of you to be advised in time. Return to your home, and make an honest attempt to redeem the past.”
“I will—I will—when I have seen you lying dead at my feet,” said Mathews. Then, turning to the others of the party, he cried: “Gentlemen, are we here to be made fools of? Let the affair proceed, or let Mr. Long and his friend make up their minds to be branded in public as cowards and poltroons.”
“Major O’Teague,” said Dick, “you cannot possibly have known that Captain Mathews, while professing honourable intentions in regard to a lady in Bath, was all the time a married man?”
“I acknowledge that that is the truth, Mr. Sheridan,” said Major O’Teague; “but you’ll pardon me if I say that I can’t for the life of me see what that disclosure has to do with the matter before us.”
“What, sir, you don’t think that a gentleman should be exempted from fighting with so unscrupulous an adventurer as, on your own admission, Captain Mathews has proved to be?” said Dick.
“Upon my soul, I don’t, Mr. Sheridan,” said O’Teague. “On the contrary, sir, it appears to me that a man who behaved so dishonourably as my friend Captain Mathews has done, makes a most suitable antagonist for a gentleman of honour like Mr. Long or yourself, sir.”
Mr. MacMahon, the stranger who had come to witness the fight, had taken the little boy by the hand, and was leading him up the meadow away from the men; and every now and again the child looked over his shoulder with big, puzzled eyes. He was asking a perpetual question.