Field," Robert Utie retired to his room, sought with an emetic to relieve his stomach, and then sat down to write some letters and an epitaph. The paper was thin, and the pen and ink matched it, but the drunken boy's eyes marred more than all; for suddenly the secret fountains of his lost youth were touched as by the prick of his pen, and the drops gushed out upon the two words he had written: "Dear mother--" Not his sweetheart, who was nothing to him now; not his "honor," which had been only vain-glory and deceit; not any thing but this earliest, everlasting faith which is ours forever, whether we be steadfast or go astray: the tie of home, of childhood, and of our mother's prayer and kiss--this was the soft reproach which glided between a wasted youth and the "field of valor" he had tempted. He wept. He sobbed. He threw himself upon the bed, and pressing his temples into the ragged quilt, felt the panorama of childhood pass across his mind like something cool, sorrowful, and compassionate. The sickness _she_ had cured, the bad words _she_ had taken from his undutiful lips, the whipping she had saved him from at the cost of her deceit, the lie she had never told _him_, the tears he had found her shedding upon her knees when first he had been drinking, the money he had never given her out of his salary but had spent with idlers, his ruined soul which to that mother's thought was pure as a baby's still, and watched by all the angels of God: these were admonitions from the green meadows of childhood. Before was the barren field of honor. How short is the struggle betwixt youth and selfishness, that sum of all diseases and crimes; that selfishness out of which wars arise and hell is habitated! A poor, overworked Christian negro, a slave in the tavern, hearing the sobbing of Robert Utie and aware that one of the duellists occupied that room, lifted the latch, and wakened the wretched boy from his remorse. "Young moss," he said, "doan you fight no juels! Oh! doan do it, for de bressed Lord's sake! It's nuffin but pride and sin. Yo's only a pore, spilt boy, but you got a soul, young moss! Doan you go git kilt in dat ar bloody gully wha' so many gits hurt amoss to deff!" Utie arose from the dream of home, and kicked the poor slave out of the room. He then drank, speculated upon his chances, practised with an imaginary pistol at the wall, and meditated running away, alternately, until Tiltock's business-step rang in the hall. "Bob," he said, "we've picked you a beautiful piece of ground, and the other party's waiting. It's the most popular juel of the season."