To resume my thesis, the merits of a quarrel are not affected by the issue. They remain as they were before. Dismissing the artificial accretions to the quarrel we so pleasantly settled an hour ago, to what does it reduce itself? Two grown men, with friends, with duties in life, with ambitions and affections, deliberately seek to slay each other for the sake of the shin-bone of a woman that neither would have dared to introduce to his mother. (Sensation.) Both knew her equally well, perhaps; both liked her, admired her beauty, pitied her misfortunes; but could either respect her character? No! I will answer for all, no. Messieurs, I perceive you agree with me; and as I understand from my friend in the blue spectacles that he has the bone of contention in his possession, may I crave it from him, and do with it as I like?' The Gascon said he might. The O'Hoolohan cried 'All right!' Blue Spectacles handed him the paper-knife. 'Then, messieurs,' exclaimed O'Hara, opening the window, 'away with it. Thus out of sight with aught that might cause malice between honest men.' And he flung it spinning through the air, amid shouts of 'Bravo! Good, good!' from all except O'Hoolohan, whose face was twisted into a queer look of deprecation. But it had not gone out of sight. Pat the dog was watching it, and, as it fell, sprang through the open casement and bounded after it in the grass. O'Hara was about to whistle him back, but he sniffed a moment at the spot where the blade had dropped, and then turned and trotted back with an air of pitiful contempt. 'That is singular!' soliloquized O'Hara aloud. 'I never knew a dog to refuse a bone before.' He tapped on the table with a knife-handle, and on the waiter answering to the call he requested him to fetch the paper-knife he would find in the grass outside. The waiter brought it back after a short search, and O'Hara carefully examined it. 'This, you are sure,' he asked of Blue Spectacles, 'was the original bone of contention?' 'Certainly,' was the ready answer. 'Then there is some mistake here. Surely, monsieur,' turning to Eugène Siraudin, 'you cannot have confounded an elephant with a human being? _This knife is of ivory!_' O'Hoolohan jumped to his feet and snatched it. The Gascon reddened and stammered, 'I knew it all along; I said what I did about it through mere brag, to cap my friend's boast about the watch-guard of her hair, and I was ashamed to explain afterwards, lest it should look like cowardice.' O'Hara sat down, ordered drinks all round, and then threw himself back in his chair, cocked his feet upon the table, and laughed a Homeric laugh. That laugh was contagious. Everybody laughed in a perfect gamut of laughter, from the shrill treble of Pale Face to the morose baritone of the surgeon, and the deep watch-dog basso-profondo of the O'Hoolohan. And then everybody, save the surgeon, embraced everybody else; and then everybody, the surgeon inclusive, drank their drinks.