“Here is some of your treachery, Mr. Calvert. You have spoiled this boy of mine; turning his head with law studies; and making him disobedient--giving him counsel and encouragement against his father--and filling his mind with evil things. It is all your doing, and your books. And now he's turned out a bloody murderer, a papist murderer, with your Roman catholic doctrines.”
“I am no Roman catholic, Mr. Hinkley,” was the mild reply--“and as for William becoming a murderer, I think that improbable. I have a better opinion of your son than you have.”
“He's an ungrateful cub--a varmint of the wilderness--to strike the good young man in my own presence--to strike him with a cowskin--what do you think of that, sir? answer me that, if you please.”
“Did William Hinkley do this?” demanded the old teacher earnestly.
“I can hardly understand it. There must have been some grievous provocation?”
“Yes; it was a grievous provocation, indeed, to have to wait for grace before meat.”
The mother of the offender supplied the hiatus in the story--and Calvert was somewhat relieved. Though he did not pretend to justify the assault of the youth, he readily saw how he had been maddened by the treatment of his father. He saw that the latter was in a high pitch of religious fury--his prodigious self-esteem taking part with it, naturally enough, against a son, who, until this instance, had never risen in defiance against either. Expostulation and argument were equally vain with him; and ceasing the attempt at persuasion, Calvert hurried on with the rest, being equally anxious to arrest the meditated violence, whether that contemplated the murderous assassination which the father declared, or the less heinous proceeding of the duel which he suspected.
There was one thing which made him tremble for his own confidence in William Hinkley's propriety of course. It was the difficulty which he had with the rest, in believing that the young student of divinity would fight a duel. This doubt, he felt, must be that, of his pupil also: whether the latter had any reason to suppose that Stevens would depart from the principles of his profession, and waive the securities which it afforded, he had of course, no means for conjecturing; but his confidence in William induced him to believe that some such impression upon his mind had led him to the measure of sending a challenge, which, otherwise, addressed to a theologian, would have been a shameless mockery.