slanderer could have traced my family to the ignoble animal
mentioned above. Vain were my endeavours. At the end of that
dance I whispered the colonel to come into the cloak-room, and I
showed him the note.

'There is a syllable wanting,' said he, with a gloomy brow.

'Hah! What syllable?' was my inquiry.

'She asks, can she write the word? And no; you see she couldn't,'
said the colonel, pointing out the passage.

'And the word was?' said I.

'Cow - cow - coward,' hissed the pirate-colonel in my ear, and gave
me back the note.

Feeling that I must for ever tread the earth a branded boy, -
person I mean, - or that I must clear up my honour, I demanded to
be tried by a court-martial. The colonel admitted my right to be
tried. Some difficulty was found in composing the court, on
account of the Emperor of France's aunt refusing to let him come
out. He was to be the president. Ere yet we had appointed a
substitute, he made his escape over the back-wall, and stood among
us, a free monarch.

The court was held on the grass by the pond. I recognised, in a
certain admiral among my judges, my deadliest foe. A cocoa-nut had
given rise to language that I could not brook; but confiding in my
innocence, and also in the knowledge that the President of the