"I disclaim all intended offence to you, Captain--I have no wish to extend the number of my adversaries, or to add to them the name of a gallant officer like yourself," replied Tyrrel. "You are too obliging, sir," said the Captain, drawing himself up with dignity. "By Cot! and that was said very handsomely!--Well, sir, and shall I not have the pleasure of carrying back any explanation from you to Sir Bingo?--I assure you it would give me pleasure to make this matter handsomely up." "To Sir Bingo, Captain MacTurk, I have no apology to offer--I think I treated him more gently than his impertinence deserved." "Och, Och!" sighed the Captain, with a strong Highland intonation; "then there is no more to be said, but just to settle time and place; for pistols I suppose must be the weapons." "All these matters are quite the same to me," said Tyrrel; "only, in respect of time, I should wish it to be as speedy as possible.--What say you to one, afternoon, this very day?--You may name the place." "At one, afternoon," replied the Captain deliberately, "Sir Bingo will attend you--the place may be the Buck-stane; for as the whole company go to the water-side to-day to eat a kettle of fish,[I-18] there will be no risk of interruption.--And who shall I speak to, my good friend, on your side of the quarrel?" "Really, Captain," replied Tyrrel, "that is a puzzling question--I have no friend here--I suppose you could hardly act for both?" "It would be totally, absolutely, and altogether out of the question, my good friend," replied MacTurk. "But if you will trust to me, I will bring up a friend on your part from the Well, who, though you have hardly seen him before, will settle matters for you as well as if you had been intimate for twenty years--and I will bring up the Doctor too, if I can get him unloosed from the petticoat of that fat widow Blower, that he has strung himself upon." "I have no doubt you will do every thing with perfect accuracy, Captain. At one o'clock, then, we meet at the Buck-stane--Stay, permit me to see you to the door." "By Cot! and it is not altogether so unnecessary," said the Captain; "for the tamned woman with the besom might have some advantage in that long dark passage, knowing the ground better than I do--tamn her, I will have amends on her, if there be whipping-post, or ducking-stool, or a pair of stocks in the parish!" And so saying, the Captain trudged off, his spirits ever and anon agitated by recollection of the causeless aggression of Meg Dods, and again composed to a state of happy serenity by the recollection of the agreeable arrangement which he had made between Mr. Tyrrel, and his friend Sir Bingo Binks.