but that it's something he can live down, maybe. And I'll go so far as to
say I'm sorry that I done all that talking right to his face. But farther
than that I won't go. And if all this is leading up to a gunplay, by God,
gents, the minute a gun comes into my hand I shoot to kill, mark you
that, and don't you never forget it!"

Mr. Gainor had remained with his hand raised during this outbreak. Now he
turned to Terry.

"You have heard?" he said. "I think the sheriff is going quite a way
toward you, Mr. Colby."

"Hollis!" gasped Terry. "Hollis is the name, sir!"

"I beg your pardon," said Gainor. "Mr. Hollis it is! Gentlemen, I assure
you that I feel for you both. It seems, however, to be one of those
unfortunate affairs when the mind must stop its debate and physical
action must take up its proper place. I lament the necessity, but I admit
it, even though the law does not admit it. But there are unwritten laws,
sirs, unwritten laws which I for one consider among the holies of
holies."

Palpably the old man was enjoying every minute of his own talk. It was
not his first affair of this nature. He came out of an early and more
courtly generation where men drank together in the evening by firelight
and carved one another in the morning with glimmering bowie knives.

"You are both," he protested, "dear to me. I esteem you both as men and
as good citizens. And I have done my best to open the way for peaceful
negotiations toward an understanding. It seems that I have failed. Very