miah, kneeling also: yes, the Schnackenberger knelt, but carefully
and by circumstantial degree; for he was big and heavy as a rhinoceros, and
afraid of capsizing, and perspired freely. Mr. Fabian kneeled like a
dactyle: Mr. Jeremiah kneeled like a spondee, or rather like a molossus.
Juno, meantime, whose feelings were less affected, did not kneel at all;
but, like a tribrach, amused herself with chasing a hare which just then
crossed one of the forest ridings. A moment after was heard the report of a
fowling-piece. Bitter presentiment of the truth caused the kneeling duelists
to turn their heads at the same instant. Alas! the subject of their
high-wrought contest was no more: English Juno lay stretched in her blood!
Up started the 'dactyle;' up started the 'spondee;' out flew their swords;
curses, dactylic and spondaic, began to roll; and the gemini of the
university of X, side by side, strode after the Junonicide, who proved to be
a forester. The forester wisely retreated, before the storm, into his
cottage; from an upper window of which he read to the two coroners, in this
inquest after blood, a section of the forest-laws, which so fully justified
what he had done--that, like the reading of the English riot act, it
dispersed the gemini, both dactylic and spondaic, who now held it advisable
to pursue the matter no further.

'Sir, my brother,' said Mr. Fabian, embracing his friend over the corpse of
Juno, 'see what comes of our imitating Kotzebue's plays! Nothing but our
nefarious magnanimity was the cause of Juno's untimely end. For had we,
instead of kneeling (which by the way seemed to "punish" you a good deal),
had we, I say, vested the property in one or other of us, she, instead of
diverting her ennui by hunting, would have been trotting home by the side of
her master--and the article would have been still living.'

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE FUNERAL GAMES.

'Now then,' said Mr. Schnackenberger, entering the Double-barrelled Gun with
his friend,--'Now, waiter, let us have Rhenish and Champagne, and all other
good things with which your Gun is charged: fire off both barrels upon us:
Come, you dog, make ready--present; for we solemnise a funeral to-day:' and,
at the same time, he flung down the purchase-money of Juno upon the table.
The waiter hastened to obey his orders.

The longer the two masters of Juno drank together, the more did they
convince themselves that her death was a real blessing to herself, who h