“Why do you want to hurt the young woman? Is this any way for an affectionate father to behave to his own offspring? Allow me to say, sir, that I’ll be hanged if I think it is! If you don’t want her to marry Sir What’s-his-name, don’t let her; but it strikes me that charging around the country after her, and threatening to kill her, is an evidence that you don’t understand the first principles of domestic discipline!”
“What do you mean? Who are you? What are you doing here?” demanded the Baron, fiercely, recovering his self-possession.
“I am Professor E. L. Baffin, of Wingohocking University; and I mean to try to persuade you to treat your daughter more gently,” said the Professor, cooling as he remembered that the Baron had a father’s authority.
“You have a weapon. I will fight you,” said the Baron, drawing his sword.
The Professor put his cigar in his mouth, and opened his umbrella suddenly in the Baron’s face.
The Baron retreated a distance of twenty feet and looked scared.
“Come,” said the Professor, closing his umbrella and smiling, “I am not a fighting man. We will not quarrel. Let us talk the matter over calmly.”
But the Baron, mortified because of the alarm that he had manifested, rushed savagely at the Professor, and would have felled him to the earth had not Matilda sprung forward and placed herself, shrieking, between the Baron and her father.
At this precise juncture, also, a young man entered the cell, and, seeing the Baron apparently about to strike a woman, seized his sword-arm and held it. The Baron turned sharply about. Recognizing the youth as his son, he simply looked at him angrily, and then, while Miss Baffin clung to the Professor, the Baron seized Ysolt by the arm and led her weeping away.
The Professor, after freeing himself from Miss Baffin’s embrace, extended his hand to the youth, and said,--
“I have not the honor of knowing you, sir, but you have behaved handsomely. Permit me to inquire your name?”
“Sir Dinadan; the son of the Baron,” said the youth, taking hold of the Professor’s hand, as if he were somewhat uncertain what he had better do with it.
“I am Everett L. Baffin, a Professor in the Wingohocking University. I was cast ashore down here with my daughter. Tilly, let me introduce to you Sir Dinadan.”