“Oh, I know it would be quite useless to argue with you, but Prince Ernest may be more amenable to reason, more open to conviction.” “Will you go?” “Well, yes, I am going,” said Tredegar, leaving the room. As soon as he was alone Alexander looked at the clock. It wanted a quarter to five. In passing before his dressing-table, his eye caught the reflection of his ghastly face in the glass. “Good heavens!” he said, “I look like a ghost already. I shall not look more pallid after that fellow has killed me—if he does kill me—than I do now; and that chance of death reminds me that I must settle up my worldly affairs as quickly as I can.” So saying, he sat down to his writing table, took a sheet of foolscap and a coarse pen, and began to write. He wrote a few lines in an “engrossing” hand, and then stopped, with a troubled brow, to reflect. Thus writing and reflecting, he completed the work he was on in about half an hour. Then he took note paper and another pen and wrote a letter, which he placed in an envelope, sealed and directed. Finally he sat back in his chair, and fell into deep thought. When Mr. Tredegar had been gone an hour, he returned and re-entered the room. “Well?” exclaimed Alick, looking up. “Well, it is settled,” said Tredegar, dropping into a chair near his friend. “I found Prince Ernest even more resolutely bent upon the meeting than you are. He considers himself the insulted party. When I requested to see him, I was admitted at once to his chamber, where I found him tearing up and down the floor in his sacred shirt. If my errand had not been so grave, I could have laughed. He made no sort of apology for his extreme déshabille, but seemed to know my errand. I handed him your challenge. He then began to rave about the insult that had been offered him, and the ‘grawnd satees-fac-shee-on,’ as he called it, that he would take. He introduced me to his friend, Major Ernest Zollenhoffar, or some such barbaric name, and he told me to settle the preliminaries of the meeting with him. Then he dismissed us to an adjoining room.” “And you settled them?” “Yes; subject, of course, to the approval of the principals. Prince Ernest approves. It is now for you to pass judgment.” “It is not likely that I shall object. Let me hear them.” Francis Tredegar took from his breast pocket a folded paper, opened it, and partly read from it and partly said: “As it is not possible that this meeting should take place on English soil, it is arranged that the parties go by the next train to Southampton, take the steamer to Jersey and proceed to the open country between St. Aubins and St. Héléir. The exact spot of the duel to be settled afterward. The weapons are to be pistols. The distance ten paces. The signals—One—Two—Three. At the last word—FIRE!”