"Ain't nobody excused on a formal show-down like this!" Bill called.
But Sir John, carried away by indignation at Jim's daring to propose that toast to the country and the sovereign he believed Jim had so dishonored, vehemently answered:
"I'm an officer in her Majesty's service, and, by Jove! I won't drink with a man who fled from England after robbing the widows and orphans of the Queen's soldiers, and you can do what you jolly well like about it."
All eyes were turned on Jim. Would he kill the stranger? Henry held Diana by the arm. Jim grew pale under the strain of the moment's intensity.
Cash was the first to speak. "What do you say to that?" he drawled, after a prolonged whistle.
But Jim kept his eyes fastened on Sir John. "If I were the man you think me," he said, "you would never have finished that sentence. You have evidently mistaken me for some one else. My name is Jim Carston, and I never took a penny that did not belong to me."
Even to Sir John the words rang true, but he had lost all control—he was determined to avenge the old score of dishonor against his regiment.
"Why, confound your impudence, there stands your cousin, Henry Kerhill!"
The crowd swung around. This was the moment—it had been a day for Maverick. What were they now to learn of Cash's "angel-face"?
Henry crossed to Jim and faced him. There was a pause. "Yes," he answered, with as much nonchalance as he could assume, "I believe the gentleman does bear a certain bald resemblance to the man you mean, but it is evidently a case of mistaken identity." Diana's eyes were following him with their mute appeal. He continued: "You will observe, Sir John, that I drank the toast. I trust you will not refuse to drink to our Queen with these gentlemen in a foreign country."