say, as I have said before, the sight of a devoted admirer would have
brought any husband of more than sixty to his senses, if he hadn't hoped
a catastrophe and determined on it. Catch them we can't, unless she
repents and relents; and prayers for that are our only resource. Now,
start, man, do!'

The postillion had his foot in position to spring. Morsfield bawled
Cumnock's name, and bestrode his horse. Captain Cumnock emerged from the
inn-yard with a dubitative step, pressing a handkerchief to his nose,
blinking, and scrutinizing the persistent fresh stains on it.

Stable-boys were at the rear. These, ducking and springing, surcharged
and copious exponents of the play they had seen, related, for the benefit
of the town, how that the two gentlemen had exchanged words in the yard,
which were about beastly pistols, which the slim gentleman would have
none of; and then the big one trips up, like dancing, to the other one
and flicks him a soft clap on the check--quite friendly, you may say;
and before he can square to it, the slim one he steps his hind leg half a
foot back, and he drives a straight left like lightning off the shoulder
slick on to t' other one's nob, and over he rolls, like a cart with the
shafts up down a bank; and he' a been washing his 'chops' and threatening
bullets ever since.

The exact account of the captain's framework in the process of the fall
was graphically portrayed in our blunt and racy vernacular, which a
society nourished upon Norman-English and English-Latin banishes from
print, largely to its impoverishment, some think.

By the time the primary narrative of the encounter in the inn yard had
given ground for fancy and ornament to present it in yet more luscious