over here alone? I have sacrificed my character-surely you can make the comparatively trifling sacrifice of foregoing this dreadful alternative !"

What could I do? Here was a young, handsome girl, one to whom I had certainly for a time been much attached, pleading with me for the sake of her father; using all the advantages of her beauty, her position, and her distress; employing all the arguments and sophistry that fall so persuasively from woman's lips, to induce me to forego this infernal duel, for which I had myself the smallest possible inclination--what could any man do? Of course I gave way, and promised her all and everything she required. She was, for once, honest in her purpose: there was no mistaking the daughter's eagerness and anxiety on the father's behalf for anything but truth, and I flattered myself I saw more into Kate's character, and liked her better, if I loved her less, during that painful halfhour, than in our acquaintance and flirtations for weeks previously. The upshot of it was, that I put the young lady again upon her horse, after administering all the restoratives in my power outward applications of eau-de-Cologne, and inward consolation in the shape of a glass of brown sherryhappy in my assured promise, that come what might, no power on earth should induce me to harm a hair of her father's head, and pledging my honour as a gentleman that no effort should be wanting on my part to avoid the proposed rencontre, and I then walked back into the house to relate all that had taken place to Jack Raffleton, who had discreetly remained up-stairs during the whole time of Kate's visit. We talked it over again and again, but we could make nothing of it: as Jack said, I had now succeeded in entangling the whole affair in such a manner that it required a wiser head than his to set things straight.

"In the first place," argued my indignant friend, "we have an Irishman to negotiate with; then we have 'a leg' to deal with, whom we must either pay eighteen hundred, or fight. He is utterly reckless, and can shoot like blazes! But that is neither here nor there. Then I have a principal to act for

who has never been concerned in an affair of this kind before, and who consequently depends or should depend wholly and solely on my experience. And lastly, just as I have screwed him up, and brought him to the scratch, a meddling little devil in ringlets comes poking her nose in, to make a mess of everything; and my friend, whose honour imperatively requires that he should go out and be shot at, the first thing to-morrow morning, pledges his honour that he will do nothing of the kind; and I am expected to reconcile all these impossibilities and contradictions. By Jove! it's enough to provoke a saint! I'll tell you what, Nogo-fight you must. I can't help what you have promised: the Major and I settled this morning, that unless certain terms were agreed to, there was only one course. You are now in my hands: it is my duty to see you through this without loss of character; and, by heavens! fight you shall!"

Mine was the weaker mind-the more yielding spirit—and again I gave way. The events of that afternoon almost made me doubt my own free agency. I seemed to be a shuttlecock, bandied to and fro between Jack, the Major, and Kate; and the only privilege of self-will that I reserved to myself was a determination to shoot in any direction but that of Mr. Cotherstone, thereby redeeming my promise to his daughter, and careless whether, by such a course, I might or might not endanger the safety of his second with a stray bullet. Ere Jack's remonstrances were completed,

and I had come to this conclusion, the hour for our quiet little dinner had arrived; and just as we were sitting down, who should make his appearance, to add to the inconveniences of the day, but Captain Clare, accompanied, as usual, by young Fitz-Arthur. We could not do less than ask them to join us in our early meal; and the pair, who had been on horseback all day, concocting some robbery, which they called "a good thing," were too happy to anticipate their usual dinner-hour, and do justice to our hospitality. The bottle of light claret, which Jack had so fondly anticipated, very soon multiplied itself into half a dozen. The new

arrivals were both particularly agreeable men; Jack himself, especially when he had anything on his hands, was one of the pleasantest fellows in England; and there I sat in that cheerful room, with its open windows and its lovely view, enjoying myself to the utmost. Ay, incredible as it may appear, of all the merry gatherings it has been my luck to attend, that was the one at which my spirits were most buoyant, and my laughter wildest and most hilarious-to which I look back with a sense of the keenest, the most thrilling enjoyment. Could it have been that the uncertainty -nay, the settled gloom-that made the future too forbidding to contemplate, enhanced beyond price the charm of the tangible present? Was it that the consciousness of peril and distress, of which two of my companions could form no idea, gave to me, in that separate existence which they were unable to appreciate, a superiority that in such society I had never felt before? Was it that something within told me the resolution I had formed for Kate's sake was generous, and true, and worthy of the days of chivalry? or was it merely the sense of impending danger that had so bracing and exhilarating an effect? I cannot tell. Probably Damocles, who sat down to dinner every day with a sword suspended over his head by a single hair, might be able to analyze my sensations and explain my feelings. But the reaction came. Our guests were bound for London by an evening train; and as they lit their cigars, and mounted their horses to depart, the sun was still above the horizon; and oh, how beautiful was the world, in the mellow lustre of that calm June evening! How could we, reprobates as we were, dare to insult the majesty of nature, by the pursuit on which we entered, as soon as our guests had disappeared, and the coast was clear? We had now no time to lose in our preparations; and the deep blue sky, serene in its holiness, looked down upon the premeditated guilt of two mortals, perfecting themselves by prac tice to destroy the life of a fellow-creature. With an accuracy that nothing but long experience could have attained, Jack had paced out the established twelve yards, from the trunk of

a giant elm that shaded the lawn of our abode. A large sheet of white paper served as an excellent target; and, placed at duelling distance, I commenced my first lesson in the use of the pistol. Twelve paces is no very great interval between two gentlemen with arms in their hands; but to those who have never made the attempt, it is extraordinary how often an object, the size of a man, may be missed, even at that range, by an inexperienced practitioner. Certainly my nerves were not in the best shooting trim, and the way in which I had been spending the last four-and-twenty hours was not likely to be conducive to accuracy of eye or steadiness of hand; and I blazed away some half-dozen times without the slightest effect upon my gigantic antagonist, whose gnarled and knotted trunk remained scatheless as before. At last I hit him, though about ten feet from the ground; and Jack, out of patience with my repeated failures and slow progress, exclaimed, "This will never do! I'll set the hair-triggers, Nogo; and mind what you are about with them. Above all, be steady.” The hair-triggers were accordingly set. The pistols, as Jack assured me, were true as rifles; and, certainly, the mechanism of the locks, and the manner in which these fine triggers went off at the slightest conceivable touch, was curious in the extreme. I took one out of his hands, and, bringing the sight to bear with all the accuracy I could command, succeeded in planting a bullet well into the sheet of white paper, then doing duty as an antagonist. "Bravo, Nogo!" said Jack; "this is what you required!" and, with a smile, he handed me the remaining weapon, prepared, as before, to go off at the very lightest touch. I had just taken it into my hands, with some remark eulogistic of its properties, when "bang!" I was startled by a sudden explosion right under my face, that made me leap three feet from the ground. The next moment I felt a thrill in one of my arms, as though suddenly seared with a red-hot iron. I was conscious of every pulsation in my brain, beating with a sound like the stroke of a church-clock. I heard Jack's voice, thick and indistinct as the shouts of a multitude. The giant elm and the evening sky were swim

ming before my eyes; the short, mossy turf, to which I seemed suddenly so close, was heaving around me. I grasped it with the clutch of a drowning man. Of that last effort I have the most vivid recollection-but I can remember no

more.

*

CHAPTER XII.

And they will learn you by rote where services were done-who came off bravely, who was shot, who disfigured-and this they can perfectly in the phrase of war; but you must learn to know such slanders of the age, or else you may be marvellously mistook.

Now Lord be thanked for my good amends.

Henry V.

Taming of the Shrew.

PEOPLE may talk of the blessings of health, and doubtless without health there can be but little enjoyment in any pleasure which life can bestow; but of all delightful sensations commend me to those of what medical men call "convalescence," when every hour brings fresh proof of returning strength, and every function of Nature is alone busied in the one great object of "getting well." The sturdy labourer, whose frame and appearance are the very types of "rude health," might have envied the soundness of my sleep and the keenness of my appetite during the fortnight or three weeks which restored to me the use of the arm I had myself so provokingly injured. In an airy and cheerful lodging, in a quiet street not very far from the Park, with all the new novels to read, with all my acquaintances delighted to while away an idle hour in my society, with the most agreeable of doctors, who persisted in looking upon me as a hero who after several exchanges of shot had at length been taken unwillingly off the ground with an injury that nothing but his