At the word, there is a sharp “klick!” The General has pulled the trigger, but the hammer catches at half cock. The General's inveterate steel-blue glance never for one moment leaves his man. He recocks the weapon with a resounding “kluck!” “Two!” says hair-trigger Overton. “Bang!” There comes the flash and roar, and dead-shot Dickinson is seen to stagger. He totters, stumbles slowly forward, and falls all along on his face. The bullet has bored through his body. The General stays by his peg--cold and hard and stern. Hair-trigger Overton approaches the wounded Dickinson. One glance is enough. He crosses to the General and takes his arm. “Come!” he says. “There is nothing more to do!” Hair-trigger Overton leads the General back to their inn. As the pair journey through the poplar wood, he asks: “What was that you put in your mouth?” “It was a bullet,” returns the General; “I placed it between my teeth. By setting my jaws firmly upon it I make my hand as steady as a church.” As the General says this, he gives that steadying pellet of lead to hair-trigger Overton, who looks it over curiously. It has been crushed between the clenched teeth of the General until now it is as flat and thin as a two-bit piece. As the two approach the tavern they come upon a negress churning butter, and the General pauses to drink a quart of milk. Once in his room, hair-trigger Overton pulls off the General's boot, which is full of blood. “Not there!” says the General. “His bullet found me here”; and he throws open the black coat. Dead-shot Dickinson's aim was better than his surmise. He struck that indicated third button; but, thanks to the strategy of hair-trigger Overton which prompted the voluminous coat, the button did not cover the General's heart. The deceived bullet has only broken two ribs and grazed the breastbone. The surgeon is called; the wound is dressed and bandaged. He describes it as serious, and shakes his head. “Still,” he observes, “you are more fortunate than Mr. Dickinson. He cannot live an hour.” As the man of probe and forceps is about to retire the General detains him. “You are not to speak of my wound until we are back in Nashville.” He of the probe and forceps bows assent. When he has left the room hair-trigger Overton asks: “What was that for?” The brow of the General grows cloudy with a reminiscent war frown. “Have you forgotten those four shots inside the circle of a dollar, and that bullet-severed string? I want the braggart to die thinking he has missed a man at twelve paces.” The two light pipes and hair-trigger Overton sends for his whisky. Once it has come he gives the General a stiff four fingers, and under the fiery spell of the liquor the color struggles into the pale hollow of his cheek. He of the probe and forceps comes to the door. “Gentlemen,” he says, palms outward with a sort of deprecatory gesture--“gentlemen, Mr. Dickinson is dead.”