"I will!"

"You promise me then?"

"I do!"

I was conscious of the increased activity of my organ of

destructiveness as I said these words. I smiled with a feeling

of pleasant bitterness--that spicy sort of malice which you may

sometimes rouse in the bosom of the best-natured man in the world,

by an attempt to do him injustice. The wound I had received, though

very trifling, had no little to do with this determination. It

was not unlike such a wound as would be made by a smart stroke of

a whip, and the effect upon my blood was pretty much as if it had

been inflicted by some such instrument. I was stung and irritated

by it, and the pertinacity of my enemy, particularly as he must

have seen that my shot was thrown away, decided me to punish him

if I could. I did so! I was not conscious that I was hurt myself,

until I saw him falling!--I then felt a heavy and numbing sensation

in the same thigh which had been touched before. A faintness relieved

me from present sensibility, and when I became conscious, I found

myself in the carriage, supported by Kingsley and the surgeon, on

my way to my lodgings. My wound was a flesh wound only; the ball

was soon extracted, and in a few weeks after, I was enabled to

move about with scarcely a feeling of inconvenience. My opponent

suffered a much heavier penalty. The bone of his leg was fractured,

and it was several months before he was considered perfectly safe.

The lesson he got made him a sorer and shorter--a wiser, if not a

better man; but as I do not now, and did not then, charge myself

with the task of bringing about his moral improvement, it is not

incumbent upon me to say anything further on this subject. We will

leave him to get better as he may.




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