“Are you an ass, Bob?” said the other, angrily. “Who minds the stupid speech of fellows whose friend is knocked over?” “Yes, but I’ll hear this out,” cried Barnard. “You’ll do so without _me_, then, and a cursed fool you are for your pains. Drive across to the Bavarian frontier, my man,” said he, giving the postilion a Napoleon, “and you shall have a couple more if you get there within two hours.” With all the speed that whip and spur could summon, the beasts sped along the level road, and Calvert, though occasionally looking through the small pane in the back of the carriage to assure himself he was not pursued, smoked on unceasingly. He might have been a shade graver than his wont, and preoccupied too, for he took no notice of the objects on the road, nor replied to the speeches of the postilion, who, in his self-praise, seemed to call for some expression of approval. “You are a precious fool, Master Barnard, and you have paid for your folly, or you had been here before this.” Such were his uttered thoughts, but it cost him little regret as he spoke them. The steam-boat that left Constance for Lindau was just getting under weigh as he reached the lake, and he immediately embarked in her, and on the same evening, gained Austrian territory at Bregenz, to pass the night For a day or two, the quietness of this lone and little-visited spot suited him, and it was near enough to the Swiss frontier, at the Rhine, to get news from Switzerland. On the third day, a paragraph in the Basle Zeitung told him everything. It was, as such things usually are, totally misrepresented, but there was enough revealed for him to guess what had occurred. It was headed “Terrible Event,” and ran thus: “At a meeting which took place with pistols, this morning, between two English lords at the White Meadows, one fell so fatally wounded that his death ensued in a few minutes. An instantaneous cry of foul play amongst his friends led to a fierce and angry altercation, which ended in a second encounter between the first principal and the second of the deceased. In this the former was shot through the throat, the bullet injuring several large vessels, and lodging, it is supposed, in the spine. He has been conveyed to the Hôtel Royal, but no hopes of his recovery are entertained.” “I suspected what would come of your discussion, Bob. Had you only been minded to slip away with me, you’d have been in the enjoyment of a whole skin by this time. I wonder which of them shot him. I’d take the odds it was the Frenchman; he handled the pistols like a fellow who envied us our pleasant chances. I suppose I ought to write to Barnard, or to his people; but it’s not an agreeable task, and I’ll think over it.” He thought over it, and wrote as follows: