"Do you ask, sir?"

"Surely; for I can not guess."

"You are less sagacious, then, than I had fancied you. You, scarce
older than myself--a stranger among us--come to me in the language
of a father, or a master, and without asking what I have of feeling,
or what I lack of sense, undertake deliberately to wound the one,
while insolently presuming to inform the other."

"At the request of your own mother!"

"Pshaw! what man of sense or honesty would urge such a plea. Years,
and long intimacy, and wisdom admitted to be superior, could alone
justify the presumption."

The cheeks of Stevens became scalding hot.

"Young man!" he exclaimed, "there is something more than this!"

"What! would it need more were our positions reversed?" demanded
Hinkley with a promptness that surprised himself.

"Perhaps not! would you provoke me to personal violence?"

"Ha! might I hope for that? surely you forget that you are a
churchman?"

Stevens paused awhile before he answered. His eyes looked vacantly
around him. By this time they had left the more thickly-settled parts