"I do, or I would not go armed," it said.

She had capped his satire with satire whose prick was, somehow,
delicious. He regarded the sweep of her handwriting with a lingering
interest, studying the swift nervous strokes before he sent the note back
with still another postscript:

"Of course I had never meant to tell anybody," he wrote. "It is not a
thing to think of in that way."

This, he thought, must be the end of the correspondence; but he was
wrong. The peripatetic go-between reappeared, and under Jack's last
communication was written, "Thank you!" He could hardly write "Welcome!"
in return. It was strictly a case of nothing more to say by either
duelist. In an impulse he slipped the sheet, with its palm symbolic of
desert mystery and oasis luxuriance, into his pocket.

"Here I am in the midst of the shucks and biting into the meat of the
kernel," said Jasper Ewold, as Jack entered the library to find him
standing in the midst of wrappings which he had dropped on the floor;
"yes, biting into very rich meat."

He held up the book which was evidently the one that had balanced
uncertainly on the pile which Jack had brought from the post-office.

"Professor Giuccamini's researches! It is as interesting as a novel. But
come! You are hungry!"

Book in hand, and without removing his tortoise-shell spectacles, he
passed out into the garden at the rear. There a cloth was laid under