The captain made me a low bow, and slowly paced back to the lodging of his fiery compatriot. When I was left alone, I, for the first time, felt the whole ill-luck of my situation. So long as I was heated by our little dialogue, I thought only of retorting the impertinent interference of a stranger with my motives or actions. But, now, the whole truth flashed on me with the force of a new faculty. I saw myself involved in a contest with a fool or a lunatic, in which either of our lives, or both, might be sacrificed--and for nothing. Hope, fortune, reputation, perhaps renown, all the prospects of life were opening before me, and I was about to shut the gate with my own hand. In these thoughts I was still too young for what is called personal peril to intervene. The graver precaution of more advanced years was entirely out of the question. I was a soldier, or about to be one; and I would have rejoiced, if the opportunity had been given to me, in heading a forlorn hope, or doing any other of those showy things which make a name. The war, too, was beginning--my future regiment was ordered for foreign service--every heart in England was beating with hope or fear--every eye of Europe was fixed upon England and Englishmen; and, in the midst of all this high excitement, to fall in a pitiful private quarrel, struck me with a sudden sense of self-contempt and wilful absurdity, that made me almost loathe my being. I acknowledge that the higher thoughts, which place those rencontres in their most criminal point of view, had then but little influence with me. But to think that, within the next hour, or the next five minutes, I might be but like the sleepers in the rude resting-place of the fishermen; with my name unknown, and all the associations of life extinguished-- "This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod"-- was an absolute pang. I could have died a martyr, and despised the flame, or rather rejoiced in it, as a security that I should not perish forgotten. But a fancied wrong, an obscure dispute, the whole future of an existence flung away for the jealous dreams of a mad Frenchman, or the Sport of a coquette, of whom I knew as little as of her fantastic lover, threw me into a fever of scorn for the solemn follies of mankind. The captain returned. I had not stirred from the spot.