What a long afternoon it was! I thought the shadows on that shaven lawn would never lengthen: I could settle to nothing: the uncertainty of my position was worrying and annoying to a degree. I would have given anything to have the matter brought to a conclusion one way or the other, even if that way was to produce the dreaded encounter. I quite longed to take my ground, and fight it out like a man. I wandered in and out of the house like some unquiet spirit; smoked half a cigar, then threw it away; glanced listlessly over the newspaper; even went to the stables to look at my solitary hack, and found myself wondering when I should ride him again, and unconsciously quoting the Arab's farewell to his steed." Three o'clock had struck, and the last hour of suspense was drawing on towards its close. At four we were to consider ourselves "booked," and to make all our preparations accordingly. Jack was even then up-stairs, arranging his pistols, and humming a whole opera through as he proceeded with his task, and I was wondering where I should be this time to-morrow, and whether the sun would be shining as brightly, and the birds warbling as gaily, though I might be blind to sunshine and deaf to song, when the train of my reflections was interrupted by the tramp of a horse cantering up the grass ride that led to the stables; and ere I had time to conjecture whether this was "the Major," with some pacific proposal, or a chance visitor from the barracks unconscious of our dilemmas and ravenous for luncheon, Kate Cotherstone galloped into the stable-yard, pale and dishevelled with the speed at which she had been riding, and lovelier than ever in her agitation and distress. Ere I had recovered from my astonishment at her sudden appearance, she had jumped off her horse, put her arm within mine, and trembling all over like an aspen-leaf, had walked me through the French windows into the cool and half-darkened drawing-room, where she explained to me in broken sentences the object of her unusual visit. As far as I could make out-for Kate's nervousness, too evidently not assumed, made her at times rather incoherent-she had heard our voices raised as if in anger, when her father and I parted the previous night; she saw in the morning, by Cotherstone's manner, that something was wrong; and when the Major arrived, at so unusual an hour as nine o'clock, evidently in consequence of a summons from his friend, she felt satisfied from her previous experience in such matters that something serious was about to take place. Brought up in a school not overfastidious as to its ideas of honour, the young lady had small scruple in listening at her papa's door, and making herself mistress of the conversation going on within, from which she learnt the whole particulars of our disagreement, and the contemplated duel. She was obliged to pretend to be ignorant of everything till the time approached for her usual afternoon ride, when, dismissing her groom, and concealing her intentions from every one, she had galloped up over to my villa, in a state of mind not to be described.

"And promise me, Mr. Nogo-promise me, I beseech you! that you will not allow this frightful business to end in a duel. Heavens! it is too horrible! Any sacrifice would be preferable. My poor father -a man twice your age, you never could lift your hand against him. If ever you cared for me-and there was a time-" said Kate, looking lovely beyond conception, and not acting now, "There was a time that

you said my word should always be your law-if ever you cared for me, I entreat you not to fight with Papa! Promise me that you will agree to a reconciliation, and the whole thing may be hushed up. What will people say to my riding over here alone? I have sacrificed my character-surely you can make the comparatively trifling sacrifice of foregoing this dreadful alternative!"

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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 her 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 half-hour, than in all 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 application of eau-de-Cologne, and inward consolation in the shape of a glass of brown sherry-happy 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 shuttle-cock, 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-aye! 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 practice 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

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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 eim and the evening sky were swimming 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.

My Birth and Early Days-Some Account of my Ancestors-My Descent from a noble Hungarian family-Their Arrival in England, and Presentation to the Prince Regent-Virginia Water-Narrow Escape from the Poachers.

I was one of a numerous family, and was born within a few miles of Windsor, so universally celebrated for its stately castle. A tuft of grass, in a small wood near Virginia Water, pointed out the place of

my birth; and it was there, in a fine sunny morning in early spring that my eyes first opened upon the light of heaven. For the three subsequent weeks, I enjoyed happiness without alloy, my mother luxuriating in all the delights of her rural caudle-herbs, roots, fruit, leaves, grain, acacia, Spanish broom, and cistus. Before, however, the month had expired, my early griefs began: deserted by my father, who had unscrupulously left both his wife and child upon the parish, I was clinging for support to her from whom I had derived my existence, when a severe and sudden malady, produced, as it was supposed, by an over-course of bark, deprived me of what in the innocence of my heart I deemed to be a tender parent's care. Had I possessed the experience of after-life, I should not have so deeply deplored the loss of one who, like the rest of her unnatural sex (I speak of the Rodentia, not human class), would have driven me from hearth and home, to struggle through a wild and thorny path, beset with dangers on every side by day and night. Sad is the thought that earth, air, fire, conspire against our hapless, timid, helpless race. Man-blood-thirsty, lawless man, murders or hunts us to death to gratify his inordinate passion for sport. The grovelling hedgehog, the offensive polecat, the destructive stoat, the purblind buzzard, the ignoble rapacious owl, the majestic celestial bird “consecrated to Jupiter," all mark us for their prey. To return to my narrative of my personal appearance I can say little. If the foul fiend Flibbertigibet did not squint the eye, he gave me the hare-lip, and I was born with the most anti-aristocratic ears, for they were long and drooping, with eyes more prominent than beautiful. Of my education-to adopt the old adage-"the least said is the soonest mended"; I never got a remove above my first form ; one point, however, I piqued myself not a little upon, namely, that like the youth of the present day, I was undeniably fast. My genealogy must not be so briefly disposed of, for I can claim an ancient and honourable pedigree, tracing my ancestry to the days of Cæsar, when the Britons, unlike the degenerate race of more recent times, pursued us for the sport alone, and not to gratify their pampered appetites. My mother's family were of Hungarian extraction, and had formerly lived at Urmeny; the sporting propensities, however, of the popular owner of the estate Graf― had nearly cut down the family tree, for shooting and coursing were carried on to an alarming degree. Happily a party of Englishmen, attracted to Vienna by the celebrated Congress of 1815, had paid a visit to the territory, for the purpose of witnessing the races, breeding establishment, paddocks, farm, and flocks of sheep of the Graf, and one of the "Britishers," attracted by the beauty of my ancestors, expressing a wish to see an alliance between the noble heirs of Hungary and the pure blood that runs in the Saxon's veins, proposed that my maternal grand-parents should leave the wild forests, the fertile plains, the magnificent lakes of ancient Panonia for the rural glades of "merrie England." This proposition was cheerfully agreed to, and upon the following day they quitted their " fatherland," en route for Albion's isle. The journey was delightful; the track passed through a fine cultivated valley, the sides of which were covered with magnificent timber, the Neutra winding its serpentine course along the bottom, a thousand thousand brilliant flowers were on its banks, and the brightest sunbeams upon its waters. A ridge of mountains to the north