From the excited conversation that ensued, Culpepper gathered that some insult had been put upon the lady at a public ball which she had attended that evening; that the Colonel, her escort, had failed to resent it with the sanguinary completeness that she desired.  I regret that, even in a liberal age, I may not record the exact and even picturesque language in which this was conveyed to her hearers.  Enough that at the close of a fiery peroration, with feminine inconsistency she flew at the gallant Colonel, and would have visited her delayed vengeance upon his luckless head, but for the prompt interference of Culpepper.  Thwarted in this, she threw herself upon the ground, and then into unpicturesque hysterics.  There was a fine moral lesson, not only in this grotesque performance of a sex which cannot afford to be grotesque, but in the ludicrous concern with which it inspired the two men.  Culpepper, to whom woman was more or less angelic, was pained and sympathetic; the Colonel, to whom she was more or less improper, was exceedingly terrified and embarrassed.  Howbeit the storm was soon over, and after Mistress Dolores had returned a little dagger to its sheath (her garter), she quietly took herself out of Madrono Hollow, and happily out of these pages forever.  The two men, left to themselves, conversed in low tones.  Dawn stole upon them before they separated:  the Colonel quite sobered and in full possession of his usual jaunty self-assertion; Culpepper with a baleful glow in his hollow cheek, and in his dark eyes a rising fire.

The next morning the general ear of Madrono Hollow was filled with rumors of the Colonel’s mishap.  It was asserted that he had been invited to withdraw his female companion from the floor of the Assembly Ball at the Independence Hotel, and that, failing to do this, both were expelled.  It is to be regretted that in 1854 public opinion was divided in regard to the propriety of this step, and that there was some discussion as to the comparative virtue of the ladies who were not expelled; but it was generally conceded that the real casus belli was political.  “Is this a dashed Puritan meeting?” had asked the Colonel, savagely.  “It’s no Pike County shindig,” had responded the floor-manager, cheerfully.  “You’re a Yank!” had screamed the Colonel, profanely qualifying the noun.  “Get! you border ruffian,” was the reply.  Such at least was the substance of the reports.  As, at that sincere epoch, expressions like the above were usually followed by prompt action, a fracas was confidently looked for.

Nothing, however, occurred.  Colonel Starbottle made his appearance next day upon the streets with somewhat of his usual pomposity, a little restrained by the presence of his nephew, who accompanied him, and who, as a universal favorite, also exercised some restraint upon the curious and impertinent.  But Culpepper’s face wore a look of anxiety quite at variance with his usual grave repose.  “The Don don’t seem to take the old man’s set-back kindly,” observed the sympathizing blacksmith.  “P’r’aps he was sweet on Dolores himself,” suggested the sceptical expressman.