And with that the black villain snatched up the half of a brick, which I suppose he kept to daunt unwelcome visiters, and taking aim at me, he cast it so well as to bring it right against my left ear, and so tumbled me to the ground. I would have blown the rascal's brains out, in requital of this assault, had there been a charge left in my piece, or had he given me time to reload; but as soon as he had cast the brick, he ran from the window, and then reappeared, holding out an old musket that, I remembered, he kept to shoot wild ducks and muskrats in the neighbouring marsh with. Seeing this formidable weapon, and not knowing but that the desperado would fire upon me, I was forced to beat a retreat, which I did in double quick time, being soon joined by my dog Ponto, who had fled, like a coward, at the first bow-wough of the bulldog, and saluted in my flight by the amiable tones of Dinah, who now thrust her head from the window, beside Jim's, and abused me as long as I could hear. BOOK II. CONTAINING SUNDRY ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ADVANTAGES OF GOOD LIVING, WITH A FEW CHAPTERS ON DOMESTIC FELICITY. CHAPTER I. SOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF JOHN H. HIGGINSON, ESQ., THE HAPPY SPORTSMAN; WITH A SURPRISING AFFLICTION THAT BEFELL THE AUTHOR. I went off in a towering rage, to think of the reception I had met, and that too after an absence of a whole night. I had been bitten by my own dog, and driven from my own doors by my own servants! But there was something in these circumstances to admonish me of the change that had come over me. They reminded me of a fact that was not always present to my thoughts,--to wit, that I was no longer Sheppard Lee, but Mr. John Hazlewood Higginson, a very different sort of personage altogether. To account for my forgetfulness of this important transformation, I must relate that, although I had acquired along with his body all the peculiarities of feeling, propensity, conversation, and conduct of Squire Higginson, I had not entirely lost those that belonged to Sheppard Lee. In fact, I may be said to have possessed, at that time, two different characters, one of which now governed me, and now the other; though the squire's, it must be confessed, was greatly predominant. Thus, the moment after the transformation, I found myself endowed with a passion for shooting, as if I had had it all my life long, a buoyant tone of mind, and, in addition, as I by-and-by discovered, with somewhat a hot temper; none of which had ever been known to me before. The difficulty was, that I could not immediately shake off my old Sheppard Lee habits; and the influence of these, perhaps (if one must scrutinize into the matter), more than the absolute retention of any other native peculiarities, drove me into the inconsistencies of which I was for a short time guilty. But I will not trouble the reader with philosophizing.