"Pray, my dear Sir Richard," interrogated Mr. Wheatley, "do not you, who are clearly a man of the world, fall into the great error of your countrymen, and fancy you can carry England about with you wherever you go? When you are in your own room, with nothing but your trunk, you can be as English as you please; but the moment you are brought in contact with Virginians, you must be Virginian to a certain extent. We manage these little affairs of honour quite differently here and in Great Britain. There, you are obliged to sneak about as if you were going to steal something, breathe no syllable of the matter to anybody, except the choice friend, and seek out some lonely spot on a common, where you can see for ten miles round, for fear you should be interrupted by the police. Now here, the constable of the township would load your pistols for you, and keep the ground clear. The first thing a man does when he is called out is to say to his wife, 'Mary, my dear, I am going to fight Jack Robertson to-morrow. I wish you would look that the lock of my rifle goes easy.' 'I'll look to that,' answers Mary; 'and I'll cut you up some patches. What time would you like the carriage, love? Don't ride on horseback; you know it always shakes your hand.'" I could not help laughing at this description, delivered with capital mimicry of the male and female voices in the colloquy; but I replied, "It would seem all ladies do not take it so quietly, from what you tell me of Miss Davenport." "Oh, that's quite a different case," said Mr. Wheatley, with a merry glance of the eye. "She is not your wife yet, you know. She has no chance of being an interesting widow, whose husband was killed in a duel. But, joking apart, for I see you wince, Miss Davenport has cause to dislike duels. Her father was killed in a duel by a dear friend and near connection, all in consequence of a confounded mistake; and his death was followed by a long train of law-suits and misfortunes, quite sufficient to give her a horror of the pleasant little practice of being shot at without pay. By the way, I don't think she knows one-half of her own history, poor girl!" he added, in a meditative tone; "if she did, it might make some difference." His words, from the manner in which they were spoken, seemed to me to have more significance than appeared upon the surface; but I had other things to think of, and the next moment he rambled on in his usual way, saying,-- "Now don't be surprised, and don't show any irritation, if you find a dozen or two people on the ground, black and white. It is just as likely as not; and mind, if they chance to get in the line of fire, shoot a white man, and not a black. A white man's life here is worth nothing; a black man is worth from nine hundred to a thousand dollars. We are a commercial people, and always take a business-like view of these transactions. Pray when is this pigeon-shooting to come off?"