Trunnion, surprised at this importunity, got up with great reluctance, in the middle of his meal, and descending to a parlour where the stranger was, asked him, in a surly tone, what he wanted with him in such a d--d hurry, that he could not wait till he had made an end of his mess? The other, not at all disconcerted at this rough address, advanced close up to him on his tiptoes, and, with a look of confidence and conceit, laying his mouth to one side of the commodore's head, whispered softly in his car, “Sir, I am the attorney whom you wanted to converse with in private.”--“The attorney?” cried Trunnion, staring, and half-choked with choler. “Yes, sir, at your service,” replied this retainer of the law; “and, if you please, the sooner we despatch the affair the better; for 'tis an old observation, that delay breeds danger.”--“Truly, brother,” said the commodore, who could no longer contain himself, “I do confess that I am very much of your way of thinking, d'ye see, and therefore you shall be despatched in a trice.” So saying, he lifted up his walking-staff, which was something between a crutch and a cudgel, and discharged it with such energy on the seat of the attorney's understanding, that if there had been anything but solid bone, the contents of his skull must have been evacuated. Fortified as he was by nature against all such assaults, he could not withstand the momentum of the blow, which in an instant laid him flat on the floor, deprived of all sense and motion; and Trunnion hopped upstairs to dinner, applauding himself in ejaculations all the way for the vengeance he had taken on such an impudent pettifogging miscreant.