"Begorra, I can tell ye that aisy enough," spluttered O'Donovan, with a mighty laugh. "Ye've been atin' the natest slip of a pig I've ever seen out of Connaught, and beautifully cooked he was too." Then he explained to them in Turkish more clearly, and these good Mussulmen burst into eruption. What a shindy there was at that dinner-table! The Circassians could not have been quicker if they had been at Donnybrook Fair, and they rushed at their host with the first weapons that came handy. O'Donovan did very well with the bottles for a minute or two, and afterwards with the leg of a chair; but they were too many for him, and when the table was upset and the lamps put out there was a fairly lively five minutes round the wreck of the dinner-table and of the empty dish that had once contained a sucking-pig _à l'Irlandaise_. The Moslem Circassians, full to repletion with the flesh of the accursed creature, fought under a disadvantage; and when O'Donovan's servants rushed in and took their master's part, the issue was no longer in doubt. Although the revolvers were going freely, only one man was hurt, and it appeared that O'Donovan had shot him in the arm. The affair created a great deal of excitement at the time, and the Circassians vowed vengeance for the insult; but we managed to pacify them eventually, and there were so many other things requiring attention that the trouble soon blew over. This was not the only occasion that O'Donovan got into a scrape, for not long afterwards, while promenading on the roof of his house, the idea occurred to him that a little revolver practice might improve his aim. Drawing his six-shooter, he proceeded to blaze away at a dog that was gnawing a bone in the middle of the street; but like another famous character in fiction, he "missed the blue-bottle and floored the Mogul." In other words, a bullet which went wide of the dog found its billet in a fleshy part of the body of a very stout Turkish woman, who on receiving this flank attack fled in great disorder screaming loudly. O'Donovan sent for me to help him out of this difficulty too, and we had to give the woman £10 to square her. The erratic marksman was then the war correspondent of the _Daily News_; but I never saw an account of this incident in his graphic descriptive sketches. He left Erzeroum in December, and afterwards, when the army of Hicks Pasha was cut to pieces in Egypt, O'Donovan met a soldier's death.