Magneezhy, though sadly frightened, looked a thought brighter; and made a kind of half step forward. "Say that ye'll ask my pardon once more,--and if not," whined the poor lad, with a voice broken and trembling, "then we must just shoot one another." "Devil a bit," answered Maister Bloatsheet, "devil a bit. No, sir; you must down on your bare knees, and beg ten thousand pardons for calling me out here, in a raw morning; or I'll have a shot at you, whether you will or not." "Will you stand that?" said Blister, with eyes like burning coals. "By the living jingo, and the holy poker, Magneezhy, if you stand that,--if you stand that, I say, I stand no longer your second, but leave you to disgrace and a caning. If he likes to shoot you like a dog, and not as a gentleman, then, cuishla machree,--let him do it, and be done!" "No, sir," replied Magneezhy with a quivering voice, which he tried in vain, poor fellow, to render warlike, (he had never been in the volunteers like me.) "Hand us the pistols, then; and let us do or die!" "Spoken like a hero, and brother of the lancet: as little afraid at the sight of your own blood, as at that of your patients," said Blister. "Hand over the pistols." It was an awful business. Gude save us, such goings on in a Christian land! While Mr Bloatsheet, the young writer, was in the act of cocking the bloody weapon, I again, but to no purpose, endeavoured to slip in a word edgeways. Magneezhy was in an awful case; if he had been already shot, he could not have looked more clay and corpse-like; so I took up a douce earnest confabulation, while the stramash was drawing to a bloody conclusion, with Mr Harry Molasses, the fourth in the spree, who was standing behind Bloatsheet with a large mahogany box under his arm, something in shape like that of a licensed packman, ganging about from house to house, through the country-side, selling toys and trinkets; or niffering plaited ear-rings, and suchlike, with young lasses, for old silver coins or cracked teaspoons.