riding into
town, reined in his generous beast, and called up to the little
lieutenant.

'Well, he's taken it, eh?'

Puddock smiled a pleasant smile and nodded.

'Walk him about, then, for an hour or so, and he'll do.'

'Thank you, Sir,' said little Puddock, gaily.

'Don't thank _me_, Sir, _either_ of you, but remember the lesson you've
got,' said the doctor, tartly, and away he plunged into a sharp trot,
with a cling-clang and a cloud of dust. And Puddock followed that
ungracious leech, with a stare of gratitude and admiration, almost with
a benediction. And his anxiety relieved, he and his principal prepared
forthwith to provide real work for the surgeons.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE ORDEAL BY BATTLE.

The chronicles of the small-sword and pistol are pregnant with horrid
and absurd illustrations of certain great moral facts. Let them pass. A
duel, we all know, spirit of 'Punch and Judy'--a farce of murder.
Sterne's gallant father expired, or near it, with the point of a
small-sword sticking out two feet between his shoulders, all about a
goose-pie. I often wondered what the precise quarrel was. But these
tragedies smell all over of goose-pie. Why--oh, why--brave Captain
Sterne, as with saucy, flashing knife and fork you sported with the
outworks of that fated structure, was there no augur at thine elbow,
with a shake of his wintry beard, to warn thee that the birds of
fate--_thy_ fate--sat vigilant under that festive mask of crust? Beware,
it is Pandora's pie! Madman! hold thy hand! The knife's point that seems
to thee about to glide through that pasty is palpably levelled at thine
own windpipe! But this time Mephistopheles leaves the revellers to use
their own cutlery; and now the pie is opened; and now the birds begin to
sing! Come along, then to the Fifteen Acres, and let us see what will
come of it all.

That flanking demi-bastion of the Magazine, crenelled for musketry,
commands, with the aid of a couple of good field-glasses, an excellent
and secret view of the arena on which the redoubted O'Flaherty and the
grim Nutter were about to put their metal to the proof. General
Chattesworth, who happened to have an appointment, as he told his sister
at breakfast, in town about that hour, forgot it just as he reached the
Magazine, gave his bridle to the groom, and stumped into the fortress,
where he had a biscuit and a glass of sherry in the commandant's little
parlour, and forth the two cronies sallied myste