"If there has been no real duel they must be put up again," volubly interposed Brown major, quite forgetting, in this agreeable termination, his recent fears. "Where was the good of all the bother? Where's the use of going in for satisfaction if you don't get satisfaction? My heart alive, who's this?" Who indeed! Brown major's startled question was caused by the appearance of a stranger on the scene. He came puffing up at a sharp pace, and Bertie nearly dropped into his shoes at the apparition: for it was his uncle, Sir Simon. And Sir Simon had heard the report of the pistols too, and took in the truth at a glance. The young surgeon, some view perhaps of self-exculpation in his mind, explained the affair in a few brief words, and dwelt upon the fact that no harm had come of it. "You two wicked ones!" exclaimed the really shocked and scared Sir Simon to Gall and Loftus. "Give me up those pistols, sir," he sternly continued to his nephew. "They shall never be in your possession again." It was easy to say, Give me he pistols. But the pistols had disappeared, and Bertie's second with them. Before Sir Simon was seen, or thought of, Mr. Leek had hastily shut the pistols into their case, and glided quietly away with them, unobserved. "Where are the pistols?" roared Sir Simon. "Onions must have gone off with them," cried Brown major, who seemed more at his ease altogether than any of the rest. Lissom and surefooted as any cat, Onions was then making his way down the almost perpendicular descent between Napoleon's column and the sands, the case of pistols safe in his hands. When the descent was effected he sat down, partly to recover breath, partly to burst into vehement laughter. Swaying his body from side to side it seemed that he never would leave off, to the intense astonishment of a fisherman going by with three mackerel dangling in his hand from a string, who stopped to gaze at him. Never, sure, did a pair of duellists take their way off the field more ignominiously than ours! For nothing to have come of the meeting was sufficiently crest-lowering on the surface, whatever the inward satisfaction might have been; but to be exposed the whole way to the fire of Sir Simon's tongue—now thundering forth its condemning anger, now sunk in ironical raillery—was hardly to be borne. He treated them like a couple of children. In the first place he made them walk arm in arm, and march before him; himself, the acting surgeon, Brown major, and Lord Shrewsbury, bringing up the rear like so many policemen. Thus they made their way home, taking the route through the Upper Town and down the Grande Rue, for Sir Simon would go no other way. Arrived at the hotel, the others having dropped off on the road, he marshalled them into his own room, shut himself in with them, and talked to the two; not in the angry or ironical strain he had been using publicly, but in a solemn, severe, and yet kind tone, with the tears of emotion running down his cheeks.