Without the slightest hesitation or embarrassment, Bailey came down, and followed him out into an avenue of trees which led up to the house. The only question he asked was--"Is the man dead?" "Come on, and I will tell you," answered the other; and when they had got some hundred yards from the house, he suddenly turned, and struck Bailey a violent blow on the face, exclaiming, "Villain and scoundrel! give me instant satisfaction for what you have done this night. There's a pistol.--No words; for by ---- either you or I do not quit this ground alive!" Bailey attempted to speak; but the other would not hear him, and struck him again with the butt end of the pistol. The young man's blood was roused. He snatched the weapon from his hand, and retired a few paces into the full moonlight. Elliot gave the words, "One, two, three," and the two pistols were fired almost at the same moment. The next morning, at an early hour, Mrs. Elliot, now very ill, said to her daughter, who had been watching by her bedside all night, "I wish, my dear child, you would send some one to Mr. Bailey, to say I desire to speak with him. After what passed between us three the day before yesterday, I am sure he will willingly relieve a mother's anxiety, and let me see you united to him before I die. It must be very speedy, Emma; for my hours are drawing to a close, and I fear can not even be protracted till your dear brother can be sent for." Emma Elliot gazed at her mother for a moment with tearful eyes, and then answered, as calmly as she could, "I can call him myself, mamma. He sleeps in my old room now, since the wind blew down the chimney of that he had formerly." "No, send one of the servants," said her mother; and in a few minutes after, Mr. Bailey was in the room. He was a man of a kind heart, and generous feelings, and but the slightest shade of hesitation in the world was visible in the consent he gave to an immediate union with Emma Elliot; but both she and her mother remarked that he was deadly pale. The laws of England were not so strict in those times as they are now in regard to marriage. The clergyman's house was not more than a stone's throw from the dwelling, and the priest was instantly summoned and came. "It is strange," he said. "Mr. Bailey," just before the ceremony. "As I walked up the avenue, I saw a great pool of blood." "Nothing else?" asked Mr. Bailey, with a strange and bewildered look. "There were poachers out last night," said the old housekeeper, who had been brought into the room as one of the witnesses; "for I heard two shots very close to the house."