duel as much as he could, an affair of the sword was nevertheless more
tolerable than the brutal fist: and of all men to be guilty of it, who
would have anticipated the young Alonzo, Chloe's quiet, modest lover!
He it was. The case came before Mr. Beamish for his decision; he had
to pronounce an impartial judgement, and for some time, during the
examination of evidence, he suffered, as he assures us in his Memoirs, a
royal agony. To have to strike with the glaive of Justice them whom they
most esteem, is the greatest affliction known to kings. He would have
done it: he deserved to reign. Happily the evidence against the
gentleman who was tumbled, Mr. Ralph Shepster, excused Mr. Augustus
Camwell, otherwise Alonzo, for dealing with him promptly to shut his
mouth.

This Shepster, a raw young squire, 'reeking,' Beau Beamish writes of him,
'one half of the soil, and t' other half of the town,' had involved Chloe
in his familiar remarks upon the Duchess of Dewlap; and the personal
respect entertained by Mr. Beamish for Chloe so strongly approved
Alonzo's championship of her, that in giving judgement he laid stress on
young Alonzo's passion for Chloe, to prove at once the disinterestedness
of the assailant, and the judicial nature of the sentence: which was,
that Mr. Ralph Shepster should undergo banishment, and had the right to
demand reparation. The latter part of this decree assisted in effecting
the execution of the former. Shepster declined cold steel, calling it
murder, and was effusive of nature's logic on the subject

'Because a man comes and knocks me down, I'm to go up to him and ask him
to run me through!'

His shake of the head signified that he was not such a noodle. Voluble
and prolific of illustration, as is no one so much as a son of nature