six o'clock to-morrow
morning, for anything he knows to the contrary, I'm no judge of
temperature."

"Oh! bother mathematics," rejoined Lawless, flinging the book which
Archer held out to him at a bust of Homer adorning the top of my
bookshelves, which it fortunately missed--"Frank, old boy! it's all
right--you're not to have a bullet through your lungs this time--shake
hands, old fellow! I'm so glad about it that I've--"

"Drunk punch enough to floor any two men of ordinary capacity,"
interposed Archer.

"Of course I have," continued Lawless, "and I consider I've performed
a very meritorious act in so doing;--there was the punch, all the other
fellows were gone away, somebody must have drunk it, or that young
reprobate Shrimp would have got hold of it; and I promised the venerable
fish-fag his mother to take especial care of his what do ye call
'ums--morals, isn't it? and instil by precept, and--and--"

"Example," suggested Archer.

"Yes, all that sort of thing," continued Lawless, "a taste for, that is,
an unbounded admiration of, the sublime and beautiful, as exemplified
under the form of--"

"Rum punch, and lashings of it," chimed in Archer; "but suppose you were
to tell Fairlegh all that has passed since he came away, or let me do it
for you, whichever you like best."

"Oh! you tell him, by all means,--I like to encourage ingenuous youth;
fire away, Archer, my boy!"

~177~~Thus urged, Archer informed me that upon my departure there had
been a somewhat stormy discussion, in which the events of the evening
were freely canvassed; and at last they came to a unanimous decision
that any man was at liberty to withdraw, if a toast was proposed to
which he objected, and that, if the toastmaster preferred giving it up
rather than allow him to leave the party, he had a perfect right to do
so. This being the case, they decided that Wilford, having been in the
wrong, ought to confess he had spoken hastily, and that, if he would do
so, and would add that he had meant nothing offensive either to me
or Oaklands, there the matter might rest. This for a long time he
positively refused to do; at length, finding he could get no one to
support him, he said that, as I had owned I was wrong in attempting to
prevent his expressing his opinion, he considered that, in all other
respects, I had behaved in a gentlemanly way; therefore, if he had said
anything which implied the contrary, he was willing to withdraw it. But,
in regard