the gentleman who stopped the chariot, with his three mounted attendants,
on the road to the sea, on the heath by the great Punch-Bowl?

That has been the question for now longer than half a century, in fact
approaching seventy mortal years. No one has ever been able to say for
certain.

It occurred at six o'clock on the summer morning. Countess Fanny must
have known him,--and not once did she open her mouth to breathe his name.
Yet she had no objection to talk of the adventure and how Simon Fettle,
Captain Kirby's old ship's steward in South America, seeing horsemen
stationed on the ascent of the high road bordering the Bowl, which is
miles round and deep, made the postillion cease jogging, and sang out to
his master for orders, and Kirby sang back to him to look to his priming,
and then the postillion was bidden proceed, and he did not like it, but
he had to deal with pistols behind, where men feel weak, and he went
bobbing on the saddle in dejection, as if upon his very heart he jogged;
and soon the fray commenced. There was very little parleying between
determined men.

Simon Fettle was a plain kindly creature without a thought of malice,
who kept his master's accounts. He fired the first shot at the foremost
man, as he related in after days, 'to reduce the odds.' Kirby said to
Countess Fanny, just to comfort her, never so much as imagining she would
be afraid, 'The worst will be a bloody shirt for Simon to mangle,' for
they had been arranging to live cheaply in a cottage on the Continent,
and Simon Fettle to do the washing. She could not help laughing
outright. But when the Old Buccaneer was down striding in the battle,
she took a pistol and descended likewise; and she used it, too, and
loaded again.