Lord Clare was stung to desperation. Openly to talk of a Union at this juncture might be productive of incalculable harm. 'Make haste, make haste!' he said pettishly. 'We don't want all the metropolis to look at us.' The first shot did no mischief. The chancellor fired wide, his wandering bullet creating a transitory excitement in a knot of bystanders. Mr. Curran's pierced his adversary's coat. 'The devil looks after his own, I might have known it,' he muttered, tossing away one pistol and raising the other. 'The gentleman stands too far off. Let him come closer. I can't see him.' Lord Clare approached nearer, and again fired wildly; while his opponent was so diabolically deliberate, that he could not help observing through the stillness of expectation: 'It won't be your fault if you don't kill me, Curran!' 'Did ye ever hear tell of Moran's collar?' inquired the advocate, as, closing one eye and screwing up his mouth into an O, he covered the chancellor. 'It was worn by justices in ould days, and had the wondrous property of contracting or relaxing according to his just or unjust conduct. How mightily it would have choked your lordship!' Curran fired at last. The chancellor staggered, but recovered himself. 'A hit!' shouted Curran. 'A hit, a hit!' yelled the rooks, in the gathering darkness. One piping bird-voice cried above the rest, 'Moiley shall eat him!' A multitude of friends vied with each other in sympathy for the chancellor. Cassidy supported him, despite his struggles, on his knee, while one ripped open his small clothes and another produced a probe. On the fair skin there was a dark mark--a tiny trickle of blood like a pin's scratch. The sight of it produced a murmur of astonishment. Lord Clare could conceal his fury no longer. 'Damn you all! Damn you, I say! for a pack of donkeys!' he cried, almost foaming. 'It's the gingerbread nuts that I eat in the long debate--they've saved me from a bullet-wound--there--laugh away, and get you gone--I've danced too long already to your asinine piping!' 'One more blaze, my lord?' coaxed Cassidy, unconvinced, amid general tittering. But he was not long unconvinced. He saw _that_ in his principal's eye which reduced him to lowliness at once, and he bowed his head as the wounded warrior quoted with majesty Rule 22: '"If a wound agitates the nerves and makes the hand shake, the business must end for that day at least." The gingerbread nuts have made my hand shake: at all events you may take it so, if you please. Provoke me no longer--clear away this rabble of idiots at once, or I tell you plainly, Mr. Cassidy, that you'll be sorry for it.' The giant could not but perceive that his principal really was frantic, and hastened to obey his behests. 'Well, well,' he meditated. 'I'd rather be badly wounded than be saved by gingerbread nuts! It's an ignominious accident, and laughable, and the chancellor cannot bear being laughed at.'