“No, I do not,” said Richard.  “Your instinct is finer than my reason.  But you are scolding me, Margaret.”

“No, I am loving you,” she said softly.  “How can I do that more faithfully than by being dissatisfied with anything but the best in you?”

“I wasn’t at my best a while ago?”

“No, Richard.”

“I can never hope to be worthy of you.”

But Margaret protested against that.  Having forced him to look at his action through her eyes, she outdid him in humility, and then the conversation drifted off into half-breathed nothings, which, though they were satisfactory enough for these two, would have made a third person yawn.

The occurrence at Slocum’s Yard was hotly discussed that night at the Stillwater hotel.  Discussions in that long, low bar-room, where the latest village scandal always came to receive the finishing gloss, were apt to be hot.  In their criticism of outside men and measures, as well as in their mutual vivisections, there was an unflinching directness among Mr. Snelling’s guests which is not to be found in more artificial grades of society.  The popular verdict on young Shackford’s conduct was as might not have been predicted, strongly in his favor.  He had displayed pluck, and pluck of the tougher fibre was a quality held in so high esteem in Stillwater that any manifestation of it commanded respect.  And young Shackford had shown a great deal; he had made short work of the most formidable man in the yard, and given the rest to understand that he was not to be tampered with.  This had taken many by surprise, for hitherto an imperturbable amiability had been the leading characteristic of Slocum’s manager.

“I didn’t think he had it in him,” declared Dexter.

“Well, ye might,” replied Michael Hennessey.  “Look at the lad’s eye, and the muscles of him.  He stands on his own two legs like a monumint, so he does.”

“Never saw a monument with two legs, Mike.”

“Didn’t ye?  Wait till ye’re layin’ at the foot of one.  But ye’ll wait many a day, me boy.  Ye’ll be lucky if ye’re supploid with a head-stone made out of a dale-board.”

“Couldn’t get a wooden head-stone short of Ireland, Mike.”  Retorted Dexter, with a laugh.  “You’d have to import it.”

“An’ so I will; but it won’t be got over in time, if ye go on interruptin’ gintlemen when they’re discoorsin’.  What was I sayin’, any way, when the blackguard chipped in?” continued Mr. Hennessey, appealing to the company, as he emptied the ashes from his pipe by knocking the bowl in the side of his chair.

“You was talking of Dick Shackford’s muscle,” said Durgin, “and you never talked wider of the mark.  It doesn’t take much muscle, or much courage either, to knock a man about when he’s in liquor.  The two wasn’t fairly matched.”

“You are right there, Durgin,” said Stevens, laying down his newspaper.  “They weren’t fairly matched.  Both men have the same pounds and inches, but Torrini had a weapon and that mad strength that comes to some folks with drink.  If Shackford hadn’t made a neat twist on the neckerchief, he wouldn’t have got off with a scratch.”