At length, on the sixth day, when I really began to feel anxious, an
express announced that his lordship had arrived at a village, about
fifty miles off, on his way home, wounded, and in great danger. I
instantly broke up the convivial party, and set out to see him. To the
imagination of a boy, as I was then, nothing could be more startling
than the aspect of the habitation which now held the haughty Earl of
Mortimer. After passing through a variety of dungeon-like rooms, for the
house had once been a workhouse, or something of the kind, I was ushered
into the chamber where the patient lay. The village doctor, and one or
two of the wise people of the neighbourhood, who thought it their duty
to visit a stranger, that stranger being a man of rank, were standing
by; and the long faces of those persons, seconded by the professional
shake of the doctor's head, told me, that they at least had no hope. It
was not so with the sufferer himself, for he talked as largely and
loftily of what he was to do within the next ten years, as if he was to
survive the century. He still breathed rage and retribution against the
Chevalier, and actually seemed to regard the lady's choice as a
particular infraction of personal claims. He had pursued the fugitives
day and night, until the pursuit threw him into a kind of fever. While
under this paroxysm he had met the enamoured pair, but it was on their
way from that forge on the Border where so many heavy chains have been
manufactured. Useless as challenging was now, he challenged the husband.
The parties met, and my father received a bullet in his body, while he
had the satisfaction of lodging one in his antagonist's knee-pan. The
Chevalier was doomed to waltz no more. But his bullet was fatal.

As I looked round the wretched chamber in which this bold, arrogant, and
busy spirit was evidently about to breathe its last, Pope's lines on the
most splendid _roué_ of his day involuntarily and painfully shot across