the end of the season came, his persistent efforts were
crowned with success. Plowden finding his life altogether intolerable
under the harrow of the bully's insolence, at length one day
challenged _him_. Then arose the question of the locality where the
duel was to take place. The laws of the duchy were very strict against
duelling, and the Duke himself was personally strongly opposed to it.
In the case of his own favourite chamberlain, too, his displeasure
was likely to be extreme. But in the neighbourhood of the Baths the
frontier line which divides the Duchy of Modena from that of Lucca is
a very irregular and intricate one. A little below the "Ponte" at the
Baths, the Lima falls into the Serchio, and the upper valley of the
latter river is of a very romantic and beautiful character. Now we
all knew that hereabouts there were portions of Modenese territory
interpenetrating that of the Duchy of Lucca, but none of us knew the
exact line of the boundary. And the favourite chamberlain, with true
Irish impudence, undertook to obtain exact information from the Duke
himself.

There was a ball that night, at which the whole of the society were
present, and, strange as It may seem, I do not think there was a man
there who did not know that the duel was to be fought on the morrow,
except the Duke himself. Many of the women even knew it perfectly
well. The chamberlain getting the Duke into conversation on the
subject of the frontier, learned from him that a certain highly
romantic gorge, opening out from the valley of the Serchio, and called
Turrite Cava, which he pretended to take an interest in as a place
fitted for a picnic, was within the Modenese frontier.

All was arranged, therefore, for the meeting with pistols on the
following morning; and the combatants proceeded to the spot fixed on,
some five or six miles, I think, from the Baths. Plowden, who, as a
sedate business man was less intimate with the generality of the young
men at the Baths, was accompanied only by his second; his adversary
was attended by a whole cohort of acquaintances--really far more after
the fashion of a party going to a picnic, or some other party of
pleasure, than in the usual guise of men bent on such an errand.

Plowden had never fired a pistol in his life, and knew about as much
of the management of one as an archbishop. The other was an old
duellist, and a practised performer with the weapon. All this was
perfectly well known, and the yo