Several other persons were on the ground, all strangers to the unfortunate young man. Another attempt was made to induce him to admit the debt of honor, and it was proposed that a reconciliation should take place between him and his former friend, the captain. To do them justice, the gentlemen unknown were ardent in their endeavors to accommodate the matter, and persuade the citizen to pay the money, and they were perfectly sincere in mediation on the occasion, for they were all members of the same dishonest clique. But nothing could shake the youth's determination to repudiate the infamous demand. Captain K----, irritated to madness at his total failure, demanded that the duel should instantly proceed--and the gang, as furious from the unexpected disappointment, determined to murder one who could not be persuaded to submit to bare-faced spoliation. Never were two combatants more unequally opposed, than the young merchant and the desperate gambler--the one, probably, had never discharged a pistol in his life--the other, and within six months, had killed his man on the very spot the doomed youth was standing. Other and fouler circumstances went to render the result of the impending duel almost a certainty. K---- fought with his own pistols--with the firing signal he was particularly familiar--his back was to the sun, and an open sky behind him. The scoundrel second, who had volunteered his services, placed the young Englishman in a position where the trunk of a large beech formed a leading line of fire, and the stream of sunshine through the vista in the trees, was almost blinding. To the intentional murderer and the intended victim, the loaded weapons were delivered--a preparatory word was spoken, the signal fell. K---- coolly raised his pistol, while, by a snap-shot, the flurried Englishman anticipated his executioner by a second. On that momentary advantage life or death depended. The bully, shot directly through the heart, fell on the sward, a dead man. While the bullet destined for the breast of his antagonist, cut the grass harmlessly at the foot of the fortunate survivor. Never was a thoughtless youth more providentially delivered by accident from certain murder--nor a scoundrel sent to his account so justly and unexpectedly as Captain K----. In riding an hour after the affair had terminated in the forest, I met the body of the dead gambler on a stretcher, _en route_ to the _Morgue_.