had never courted the lady, on the contrary, she had courted him; but the husband had little to fear from the seduction of his last rib, the worst, he used to say in his ire, of the whole number, as Clifford had no intention of involving himself in an action for damages upon so poor an inducement, and only flirted with the lady occasionally, not from any dishonourable predilection, but simply because it was visibly impossible to turn his back upon a fair syren with red hair, who insisted upon being wooed, although in his eyes she was much too valueless a prize to be won. She therefore, so far as he was concerned, continued pure as the icicle on its own penthouse in a freezing December. The stain upon her husband's brow was a mere hallucination of his own distempered fancy, or, as she more figuratively declared, a maggot that he had got into his head.

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Clifford answered the challenge however in the politest terms possible, entering into explanation, but declaring his readiness to meet the irate Mr. Tomkins whenever and wherever he might be pleased to appoint. The challengee then went in quest of Vernon, to show him the precious billet, and consult with him how the eventful meeting had best take place. Here was a fine opportunity for a harmless joke; it was consequently resolved that an honourable meeting should be given to the valorous knight of the alembic, who was as soft as his own mash, though stronger than his own gin, not indeed in head, but in wind and limb. Vernon consequently called upon the incensed Mr. Joseph Tomkins, and was ushered into the counting-house, where sat the irascible champion of connubial rights, propped upon a high stool before a broad oak desk, with a grey goose quill stuck behind his right ear, an emblem at once of his years and of his folly.

When Vernon made known the purport of his visit, Mr. Tomkins was absolutely thunderstruck. Though he had sent a challenge, he had never contemplated so terrifying a result. His breast began to heave, and his heart thumped almost audibly against his waistcoat. He was in a state of absolute stupefaction at the thought of exposing his precious life, for precious it was to all the spirit-loving ladies within a circle of half a league. Having recovered his breath, the terrified husband declared himself perfectly satisfied that nothing partikler had passed between Clifford and Mistress VOL. X.-NO. 1.—JANUARY 1837.

Joseph. He was sure, he said, that Mister Clifford was too much of a gentleman for to go for to wrong a man of substance, who had served the parish in the responsible capacities of overseer and churchwarden, in so tender a point as through the fair fame of his wife. "I'm certain that he wouldn't do nothing wrong, and, therefore, Mr. Vernon, with your leave, we won't say a word more about the business.”

"But you have sent a challenge to my friend; there is now no alternative but that the matter should be decided according to the laws of honour and of arms."

"If by arms you mean fists, I've no objection to try my hand that way; with a proviso, that if he gets the worst on't, he'll shake hands like a brave man, and be friends."

"Fists! No, Sir, we leave that mode of settling disputes to your draymen, as we do drawing full hogsheads to your dray-horses: but gentlemen settle their differences either with the pistol or the sword."

Why, what would you have?” replied the man of malt; "don't I say I'm perfectly agreeable to make the matter square between us?"

"That can only be done by fighting." "Nonsense, fighting-I'll ax his pardon." "You must exchange shots first." "But suppose I should be killed?" "Then you will have died an honourable death, and be the first of your family who will have perished on the field of glory."

“I had much rather go out of the world upon a decent feather-bed than upon a dirty green sward. I have no ambition to die like a dog with a bullet through my brains." Say like a hero, rather."

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I won't fight."

"Then you'll be posted for a coward." "I'll bring my action for damages." "You'll be horsewhipped and stigmatised for a poltroon wherever you appear.”

""Tis a savage custom, well enough for Frenchmen and such-like barbarians; but here, in this free country, 'tis against the laws, and I must decline breaking the laws, because it is not becoming a Christian man, and a member of the protestant church."

"But an infraction of the laws of honour is little becoming a gentleman.”

"A fiddlestick's end, a gentleman !—I'm no gentleman, Mr. Vernon, I'm only an honest tradesman, perfectly satisfied with my wife's virtue and Mr. Clifford's integrity;

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what would you more? I was never born to be a gentleman, Mr. Vernon, never. I'm rich-I've my thousands per annum, got by an honest trade, and it wouldn't be prudent to risk at once the loss of my life and the enjoyment of so much money. If your poor dear dead father was alive, how would he be horrified at the thought of his old friend Joseph Tomkins standing up like a huge post to be shot at! I wonder he is still in his grave while such murderous doings are going on above ground. Think of your poor old father, and have pity upon me."

"I grieve for you, Mr. Tomkins,” replied Vernon, "but there is no alternative. Clifford is determined to have satisfaction; you had therefore better put the best face you can upon the matter, and meet him. He's a dead shot, it is true, but you are well aware the best shots miss sometimes, and there is at least a possibility that your ball may hit. Should this be the case, even if you fall, you will escape the mortification of dying unrevenged. Do you think you could hit a puncheon at eight paces?"

"May be I could if I fired, but I shouldn't have the courage to pull the trigger, if I knew 'twas a man that stood before me instead of a puncheon."

"Never fear; your sense of wrong will nerve your finger, if it does not animate your heart. Don't be afraid of missing, man. I once knew a keen sportsman who fired at a barn-door, and shot a full-blown apple-tree. You may make as good a marksman."

"Dear, dear,” cried Mr. Tomkins, in extreme alarm, "is there nothing you can do to bring matters to an amicable settlement? Do stand my friend for once. I'll remember it to my dying day, if you will. Don't turn away your head, but look upon me with compassion. I'm only a distiller, and was not brought into the world to be sent out of it like a valorous gentleman, of which I am none, with a hole drilled through my head or my heart by a leaden bullet. I'd willingly give Mr. Clifford a hundred pounds, and should not object to add another fifty if he's hard upon me-for I know he isn't overburthened with that sort of commodity-if he will forget and forgive."

"Such a proposal would make him frantic, for when his passion is roused he is as fierce as a young tiger: besides, it would be only adding insult to provocation. There is nothing to be done, my good friend, you must fight."

So saying, Vernon quitted the distiller, leaving him to chew the cud of repentance for having so rashly listened to the advice of friends, and sent a challenge to an accomplished manslayer, as he now considered his opponent, who would most likely make no more of sending him to his account than he would of squeezing a fly, which had impertinently buzzed about his aristocratic ears, between his finger and thumb.

After repeated interviews, it was at length settled that Mr. Tomkins and Clifford should meet on the second morning after the receipt of the former's challenge by the latter, at Chalk Farm. Meanwhile, a plan was proposed by Vernon, which was finally entered into by Mr. Tomkins' friend, whom Vernon happened to know. It was this: neither pistol was to be loaded with ball, but into Clifford's was to be put a pellet of soft dough, which was to be discharged at his adversary's head within three or four paces.

All the preliminary arrangements being made, the awful morning at length dawned “big with the fate of" Tomkins and of Clifford, and those parties arrived at the ground. The sun, to use an old but classical image, was peeping from behind his curtain in the east, like a watchful lover from behind a thickset hedge, when they reached the scene of action.

Although it was a raw October morning, Mr. Tomkins approached the spot panting with his exertions, and reeking with his terrors like a seethed baron of beef on a Lord Mayor's festival. The steam ascended from him like the vapour from fermented grains, and enveloped him in a mist of his own engendering. The tears started into his eyes, his lips quivered, and he muttered to himself, "I'm a dead man; what's to be done? Poor Mistress Joseph and the little Tomkinses, what will they do if I am sent on my road to heaven, of which I am as ignorant as the babe unborn? I an't in a fit state to die, I'm sure I an't, and suppose I should go to the devil, what a sad thing for a wealthy distiller and the father of a family!"

He paused a moment, and thus continued his soliloquy :

"I shall never have courage to stand fire. I am brought like an ox to the slaughter, and yet if I am killed I shan't be murdered, but only be put to death like a gentleman. Is there nothing to be done," said he, turning to one of his friends, “to prevent mischief? I'm agreeable to anything."

His second interrupted him by reminding him of the folly of exposing his terrors to his adversary now they were upon the ground, and that every attempt at an accommodation had failed. But Mr. Tomkins' alarm was paramount over every other feeling, and he roared to the extreme pitch of his voice

"Mr. Clifford-Sir-I ax your pardon, on my knees I ax your pardon. I daren't stand to be fired at, indeed I daren't let us be friends: for mercy's sake, forgive me." Clifford pretended not to hear him; the poor agitated distiller rushed forward, and, dropping down on his knees before him, besought him to spare his life for the sake of his poor wife and four helpless babes.

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Sir," said Clifford, in a peremptory tone, "you demanded satisfaction, and you shall have it. I sought not this meeting; indeed I had no desire to meet a man of your resolution in such a deadly encounter; but you have cast an imputation upon my courage by calling me to the field, and I come here to prove to you that your call has not been made in vain. I am about to make you that reparation for your injured honour which you have demanded at my hands. This matter has now proceeded too far to admit of any temporising. You must instantly prepare to change shots with me." "I can't prepare. I haven't the courage. I don't want no reparation. I have no doubt of Mrs. Joseph's virtue and of your integrity. I will never complain of injured honour, indeed I will not. If I should be killed, for I hear you're a dead hand at a pistol, where will my honour be then? A fig for such a counterfeit token -'tis nothing better than a Brumajem ha'penny. I don't want to have nothing to do with honour. I'm better fitted to handle a stave than a pistol, for when I served as constable I received a vote of thanks from the parish for keeping the peace. You're a gentleman, Mr. Clifford, and I am satisfied." "But I am not, Sir; you have called my courage into question, and I am determined to prove to you that you have not to deal with such a rascal as you have presumed to take me for. Take your ground, Sir, and do not oblige me to think you the coward I should be unwilling to call you." "I know I'm a coward, Mr. Clifford, I know I'm a coward,” cried the terrified man, still upon his knees; "but I didn't make myself, and am not therefore answerable for my infirmities. I know I am not

a man of mettle, therefore have mercy upon me, and prove that you are as generous as brave. We never had no valour in our family-never. I didn't come of a fighting stock. What would you have? My grandfather was but a poor man, who carried a knot on his shoulder for thirty-five years, but he was as honest a porter as ever plied at Temple Alley. My father was brought up in a charity-school, and has had ‘dunce' pinned to his back many a time and oft, though he managed to leave me half a plum at his death. I am the first of the Tomkinses that was ever breeched in superfine Saxony, or that was ever booby enough to send a challenge after the fashion of gentlefolks; and if I'm spared now, I'll take good care it shall be the last. I'm a coward, there's no doubt of that, and 'tisn't worth spending powder and ball upon a coward. I can't help my nature, Mr. Clifford, for 'what's bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh,' as my grandam used to say when she chided me, with a grandmother's love, for being more stupid than my brother Thomas. That was a kind creature, that grandmother of mine, but how would she be scared if she could see me now!"

Clifford took his position, and the halfdistracted Mr. Joseph Tomkins was placed or rather dragged in front of him within about four paces of his pistol, already elevated to the level of the distiller's brains. After standing a moment, his knees trembling under him, like the surface of an agitated custard, he suddenly burst from the hands of his friends, and hurried across the field, like a windmill upon rollers. He was however soon overtaken panting and "larding the lean earth," and brought back to his position. He was so terrified as to be scarcely conscious of his situation. He closed his eyes and snorted like a whale upon a shallow; still none of those votaries of fun by whom he was accompanied upon this jocose occasion entertained towards him one jot of sympathy. Though with countenances as lowering as a November dawn, their hearts were laughing under their waistcoats at the probable issue of the droll adventure in which they had become such willing agents.

The unhappy rectifier, at once of alcohol and of his wife's honour, stood utterly unconscious of the joke under which he was at that very moment suffering the tortures of purgatory. His flesh danced upon his bones as if it had been seared with a heated

gridiron, and the blood galloped through his veins at the rate of two leaps in a second. It would have moved a stone to see the distress of the half distracted husband, who would have willingly left his wife's reputation for ever to take care of itself, if he could but get out of his present dilemma without the chance of death by powder and ball.

Everything being now ready, a pistol was put into the hand of the terrified challenger, who stood before the challengee in speechless terror. The moment he grasped the weapon of death, which was cocked, with a convulsive twitch of the finger he pulled the unresisting trigger, and discharged the contents against the head of his second, who, finding his whiskers singed, and a clean shirt marred, staggered back and quitted his hold; but as the pistol had only been charged with powder, no other damage was done than that of singing his clothes and the hair that adorned his cheeks and upper lip, the latter of which being curled and well pomatumed, narrowly escaped a general conflagration. The gentleman, however, adroitly covered the imperilled mustachios with his broad palm, and thus saved from certain demolition those capillary ornaments. Meanwhile Mr. Tomkins took no notice of the disaster, being too much absorbed in his own fears to notice external objects. He stood rigid as a statue, with his eyes closed, his pistol arm extended, and his lips compressed, waiting to hear the dreadful sound that was, in all human probability, to be the signal for his exit from this world, in which he had been so comfortable, to one in which it was doubtful whether he should be equally happy, for the thought of death brought with it recollections which he would have been very reluctant to communicate to the officers of excise, when he found that he was likely to live for another term of years.

In the mean time the discharged pistol was reloaded without ball, and placed again in the challenger's hand, which was raised by his second towards the breast of the challengee, who, advancing sufficiently near to be sure of making his hit, at the word "Fire," discharged his pistol. Down dropped the man of grains like a slaughtered ox, with his mouth open to the utmost extremity of his jaws, his eyes staring, and his wits altogether gone. The dough pellet had struck him in the forehead, and whilst

he lay on the sward in a gentle deliquium, Vernon, who had attended Clifford in the character of second, blackened the spot with a small piece of moistened charcoal, reasonably conceiving that the fat champion of the still would, upon recovering from his panic, imagine himself fairly shot through the head.

The wits of Mr. Tomkins, such as they were, soon returned; and he lay upon the ground bellowing and groaning in a state of doubtful unconsciousness, declaring that he was killed, and supplicating heaven for mercy upon his poor soul.

A large shutter was now procured, and six sturdy labourers were engaged, at halfa-crown a head, to bear this prostrate “tun of man," with scarcely "half a kilderkin of wit," to the farm-house. A little pig's blood, which had been previously secured in a phial, was dropped upon his forehead and applied to the tips of his fingers, so that when he put his hand to his temples, he was confirmed in the belief that a ball had passed through them, so soon as he perceived the incarnadine hue with which he fancied they were dyed.

As the fallen champion lay on the shutter he continued his cries, and occasionally lurched so suddenly, that his six bearers, who with difficulty staggered under their colossal burthen, could scarcely prevent him from falling off, and thus risking the fracture of his bones and the bursting of his huge body. By constantly rubbing his face, he had so besmeared it with blood and perspiration, that by the time his bearers reached the farm, he looked positively ghastly. They at length got him into the house, and tilted him from the shutter upon a large bed, the sacking of which immediately gave way beneath so unusual a weight of human flesh, and he sank through the opening, with his legs sticking in the air, between which his head would most certainly have been thrust, but for that bulky portion of his outward man buttoned up in his waistcoat.

A mattress was now spread upon the floor; upon this the unwieldy Mr. Tomkins was stretched, still groaning and uttering piteous exclamations, yet in a manner so utterly incoherent that Vernon began to be seriously alarmed for the issue, until assu ed by one of the party present, who was a medical man, there was no danger; very justly observing, that cowards are never frightened to death.

This is no doubt philosophically true, for cowards are so much in the habit of being alarmed, that they do not feel the same sudden and severe shock with which alarm is invariably accompanied to a really brave spirit. A brave man when frightened (a matter of no common occurrence) can only be so by something under which the sternest courage must quail. On the contrary, a coward quails at the bare apprehension of danger; he is, therefore, too much accustomed to be frightened to die in consequence of it. Cowardice escapes injury from terror, because terror is congenial to it when courage might become its victim, because the power of terror is greater in proportion as the experience of it has been less.

Mr. Tomkins being now in a state of passive helplessness, was dosed with a few glasses of his own gin, or rather of gin that had been his own. Notwithstanding that his poor stupid head was filled with images of worms, skulls, and cross-bones, the moment the bottle was placed to his mouth, with a sort of mechanical eagerness he imbibed the spirit in copious mouthfuls, quite belying the maxim that doctors never take their own physic, for it will be remembered that gin is a panacea among the vulgar; and this inspiration of his own manufacture speedily produced the effect of a composing draught, sending the slaughtered man, for so he fancied himself, asleep, and thus stilling his bellowing, though it set him snoring with a vehemence scarcely less deafening. The perspiration rolled from him in streams, his wig escaped from his slippery forehead, and he looked for all the world like a dying Polyphemus with his eye out.

The snoring distiller was now taken home in his own carriage, which had been sent for for this purpose. Vernon and Clifford were permitted to remain with the wounded man, to watch by him during the night, as they were extremely anxious to see how the farce would end.

Mrs. Tomkins had been informed in the mean while that her husband had received a probably fatal wound in a duel, fought in vindication of his own honour and her reputation. At this unexpected but by no means unv/elcome information, she evinced far more surprise than concern; for she had not given her poor dear man, as she familiarly termed him, credit for spirit enough

to put his soft head in the way of a hard bullet. As, however, he had jeoparded his scanty stock of brains for her sake, she prudently shut herself up in her bed-room, so that no one could perceive how she was affected by Mr. Joseph's pitiable condition. In the privacy of her chamber, she could be just as sorrowful as suited her temper, and this was far more mirthful than mournful. She had a much stronger tendency to smiles than to tears, the former of which she practised upon all occasions where the opportunity of being observed was afforded: holding it an uncontrovertible axiom of woman's philosophy, that tears mar the beauty which smiles cannot fail to adorn. In truth, she at the present moment regretted more the now unavoidable termination of her intimacy with Clifford, than the probably fatal result, as she was led to imagine, of his encounter with her unfortunate husband, for she was fully impressed with the idea that the latter was mortally wounded. She committed Mr. Tomkins very contentedly to the care of Vernon, Clifford, and the doctor, the latter a family apothecary, who sold his physic as the distiller did his gin, by measure, and many a gallon had he crammed down the throats of the family who had committed their bodies to his keeping, or I should say better, to his physicking.

The poor terrified husband slept for about eight hours without once opening his eyes. When brought from the field of strife, a shell had been ordered from a neighbouring undertaker, a visiting acquaintance of the Tomkinses, in which Mr. Joseph was put, after having been regularly shrouded, and placed before a large pier glass in the drawing-room. The only light in the apartment was that which was permitted to enter through a round hole in the shutter, and fell immediately upon the mirror. The instant the unwieldy sleeper awoke, he started from the shell, and beholding the reflection of his squalid countenance, and the round black spot upon his temples, he uttered a frightful yell, falling at the same moment with a terrific crash upon the floor, and overturning the shell, a table, and six chairs. For some moments he did not utter a word. At length he muttered, in a tone distinctly audible—

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Right through the head-the coffin and the shroud-there can be no doubt-plump through my temples-my skull drilled like