You had better." Brithwood shook off the grasp, turned and struck him; that last fatal insult, which offered from man to man, in those days, could only be wiped out with blood.
John staggered.

For a moment he seemed as if he would have sprung on his adversary and felled him to the ground--but--he did it not.
Some one whispered,--"He won't fight.

He is a Quaker." "No!" he said, and stood erect; though he was ghastly pale, and his voice sounded hoarse and strange--"But I am a Christian.

I shall not return blow for blow." It was a new doctrine; foreign to the practice, if familiar to the ear, of Christian Norton Bury.

No one answered him; all stared at him; one or two sheered off from him with contemptuous smiles.