"Certainly not," returned the young Englishman quietly, picking his hat up, all broken and muddy, from the trampled ground: "I shall treat you very differently." "You will fight, will you? Come--I challenge you. Let us fight to-morrow morning," exclaimed the bully, who was, as it turned out, a notorious provincial duellist. "Not to-morrow, but now," rejoined my friend; "I have no time to wait here, for I must be in Paris on Tuesday." "Then it will be in Père la Chaise," responded the other brutally. There was no difficulty in procuring seconds, which were even more plentiful in those parts than principals, and the whole party immediately left the town for a wood outside its suburbs. The choice of weapons of course lay with the Englishman. "Which do you prefer," asked the Frenchman who acted as his friend upon the occasion--"the pistol or the sword?" "I have never fired a pistol in my life," replied the Englishman, "nor handled a sword." "Heavens!" cried his second, "what a barbarous education, what a stupendous ignorance! You are as good as dead, I fear. I know not which to recommend you. It is, however, at least sooner over with the pistol." "The pistol be it then," said the Englishman coolly. "I elect that only one shall be loaded; and that we fire within four paces of one another. We shall then have an equal chance." The duellist turned pale as the death that threatened him, but he did not venture to make any objection. It was manifest no other proposal would have been fair. The seconds went apart, and placed powder and ball in one weapon, powder only in the other. The combatants drew lots for choice. The Frenchman won. The pistols were lying on a log of wood; he advanced towards them, took one up in his hand, and retired with it, then once more came back, and exchanged it for the other. He fancied that the weapon was lighter than it should have been if it had a ball within it. My friend's second objected strongly to this course; he called it even unfair and shameful; he protested that the pistol taken first ought to be retained. But the young Englishman, who was leaning carelessly against a tree, exclaimed, "Let the gentleman have which he likes. Whether he is right or not will be decided in a few seconds." So the combatants were placed opposite to one another, and advanced to within four paces. They raised their weapons; the word was given to fire, and the Frenchman fell, pierced through the heart. "His blood is upon his own head," exclaimed the other solemnly. "He was brave enough to have been a better man." Then perceiving that his help could be of no avail to his late antagonist, he lifted his battered hat to the Frenchman that remained alive, and returning to his carriage, immediately resumed his journey. It is not possible, without putting some very strained and unusual meaning on the word, to call the hero of such an adventure a coward; yet the man who acted thus was Marmaduke Heath.