"That is impossible!" I answered coolly. I had no need to ask
what he meant. Give up Pavannes' messenger indeed! Never!

He regarded me--unmoved by my refusal--with a smile under which I
chafed, while I was impotent to resent it. "Do not build too
much on a single blow, young gentleman," he said, shaking his
head waggishly. "I had fought a dozen times when I was your age.
However, I understand that you refuse to give me satisfaction?"

"In the mode you mention, certainly," I replied. "But--"

"Bah!" he exclaimed with a sneer, "business first and pleasure
afterwards! Bezers will obtain satisfaction in his own way, I
promise you that! And at his own time. And it will not be on
unfledged bantlings like you. But what is this for?" And he
rudely kicked the culverin which apparently he had not noticed
before, "So! so! understand," he continued, casting a sharp
glance at one and another of us. "You looked to be besieged!
Why you, booby, there is the shoot of your kitchen midden, twenty
feet above the roof of old Fretis' store! And open, I will be
sworn! Do you think that I should have come this way while there
was a ladder in Caylus! Did you take the wolf for a sheep?"

With that he turned on his heel, swaggering away in the full
enjoyment of his triumph. For a triumph it was. We stood
stunned; ashamed to look one another in the face. Of course the
shoot was open. We remembered now that it was, and we were so
sorely mortified by his knowledge and our folly, that I failed in
my courtesy, and did not see him to the gate, as I should have
done. We paid for that later.