At length, on the sixth day, when I really began to feel anxious, an express announced that his lordship had arrived at a village, about fifty miles off, on his way home, wounded, and in great danger. I instantly broke up the convivial party, and set out to see him. To the imagination of a boy, as I was then, nothing could be more startling than the aspect of the habitation which now held the haughty Earl of Mortimer. After passing through a variety of dungeon-like rooms, for the house had once been a workhouse, or something of the kind, I was ushered into the chamber where the patient lay. The village doctor, and one or two of the wise people of the neighbourhood, who thought it their duty to visit a stranger, that stranger being a man of rank, were standing by; and the long faces of those persons, seconded by the professional shake of the doctor's head, told me, that they at least had no hope. It was not so with the sufferer himself, for he talked as largely and loftily of what he was to do within the next ten years, as if he was to survive the century. He still breathed rage and retribution against the Chevalier, and actually seemed to regard the lady's choice as a particular infraction of personal claims. He had pursued the fugitives day and night, until the pursuit threw him into a kind of fever. While under this paroxysm he had met the enamoured pair, but it was on their way from that forge on the Border where so many heavy chains have been manufactured. Useless as challenging was now, he challenged the husband. The parties met, and my father received a bullet in his body, while he had the satisfaction of lodging one in his antagonist's knee-pan. The Chevalier was doomed to waltz no more. But his bullet was fatal. As I looked round the wretched chamber in which this bold, arrogant, and busy spirit was evidently about to breathe its last, Pope's lines on the most splendid _roué_ of his day involuntarily and painfully shot across my recollection:-- "In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung, The walls of plaster, and the floor of dung; The George and Garter dangling from the bed, Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies; alas, how changed from him The glass of fashion!" I say no more of those scenes; a few days, only enough to collect the branches of the family round the bed, terminated every thing. Grief, they say, cannot exist where there is no love, but I was not inclined, just then, to draw subtle distinctions. I was grieved; and paid the last duties, without blame to myself, or, I hope, irreverence in the sight of others. The funeral was stately, and all was over.