!"

'Od, I found myself immediately in a scrape; but how to get out of it
baffled my gumption. It set me all a shivering; yet I thought that, come
the worst when it should, they surely would not hang the father of a
helpless small family, that had nothing but his needle for their support,
if I made a proper affidavy, about having tried to make peace between the
youths. So, conscience being a brave supporter, I abode in silence,
though not without many queer and qualmish thoughts, and a pit-patting of
the heart, not unco pleasant in the tholing.

"Blood and wounds!" bawled Maister Thomas Blister, "it would be a
disgrace for ever on the honourable profession of physic," egging on poor
Maister Willy Magneezhy, whose face was as white as double-bleached
linen, "to make an apology for such an insult. Arrah, my honey! you not
fit to doctor a cat,--you not fit to bleed a calf,--you not fit to
poultice a pig,--after three years' apprenticeship," said he, "and a
winter with Doctor Monro? By the cupping-glasses of 'Pocrates," said he,
"and by the pistol of Gallon, but I would have caned him on the spot if
he had just let out half as much to me! Look ye, man," said he, "look
ye, man, he is all shaking" (this was a God's truth); "he'll turn tail.
At him like fire, Willie."

Magneezhy, though sadly frightened, looked a thought brighter; and made a
kind of half step forward. "Say that ye'll ask my pardon once more,--and
if not," whined the poor lad, with a voice broken and trembling, "then we
must just shoot one another."

"Devil a bit," answered Maister Bloatsheet, "devil a bit. No, sir; you
must down on your bare knees, and beg ten thousand pardons for calling me
out here, in a raw morning; or I'll have a shot at you, whether you will
or not."

"Will you stand that?" said Blister, with eyes like burning coals. "By
the living jingo, and the holy poker, Magneezhy, if you stand that,--if
you stand that, I say, I stand no longer your second, but leave you to
disgrace and a caning. If he likes to shoot you like a dog, and not as a
gentleman, then, cuishla machree,--let him do it, and be done!"

"No, sir," replied Magneezhy with a quivering voice, which he tried in
vain, poor fellow, to render warlike (he had never been in the volunteers
like me). "Hand us the pistols, then; and let us do or die!"

"Spoken like a hero, and brother of the lancet: as little afraid at the
sight of your own blood, as at that of your patients