ss, advanced
close up to him on his tiptoes, and, with a look of confidence and
conceit, laying his mouth to one side of the commodore's head, whispered
softly in his car, "Sir, I am the attorney whom you wanted to converse
with in private."--"The attorney?" cried Trunnion, staring, and
half-choked with choler. "Yes, sir, at your service," replied this
retainer of the law; "and, if you please, the sooner we despatch the
affair the better; for 'tis an old observation, that delay breeds
danger."--"Truly, brother," said the commodore, who could no longer
contain himself, "I do confess that I am very much of your way of
thinking, d'ye see, and therefore you shall be despatched in a trice."
So saying, he lifted up his walking-staff, which was something between
a crutch and a cudgel, and discharged it with such energy on the seat of
the attorney's understanding, that if there had been anything but solid
bone, the contents of his skull must have been evacuated.

Fortified as he was by nature against all such assaults, he could not
withstand the momentum of the blow, which in an instant laid him flat
on the floor, deprived of all sense and motion; and Trunnion hopped
upstairs to dinner, applauding himself in ejaculations all the way for
the vengeance he had taken on such an impudent pettifogging miscreant.

The attorney no sooner awaked from his trance, into which he had been so
unexpectedly killed, than he cast his eyes around in quest of evidence,
by which he might be enabled the more easily to prove the injury he had
sustained, but not a soul appearing, he made shift to get upon his legs
again, and, with the blood trickling over his nose, followed one of the
servants into the dining-room, resolved to come to an explanation with
the assailant, and either extort money from him by way of satisfaction,
or provoke him to a second application before witnesses. With this
view, he entered the room in a peal of clamour, to the amazement of all
present, and the terror of Mrs. Trunnion, who shrieked at the appearance
of such a spectacle; and addressing himself to the commodore, "I'll
tell you what, sir," said he; "if there be law in England, I'll make you
smart for this here assault." You think you have screened yourself from
a prosecution by sending all your servants out of the way; but that
circumstance will appear upon trial to be a plain proof of the malice
prepense with which the fact was committed; especially when corroborated
b