water, Mr. Cossey."

Edward Cossey looked puzzled. "Do you mean to suggest that I should
fight a duel with you?" he said.

"To challenge a man to fight a duel," answered the Colonel with
deliberation, "is an indictable offence, therefore I make no such
challenge. I have made a suggestion, and if that suggestion falls in
with your views as," and he bowed, "I hope it may, we might perhaps
meet accidentally abroad in a few days' time, when we could talk this
matter over further."

"I'll see you hanged first," answered Cossey. "What have I to gain by
fighting you except a very good chance of being shot? I have had
enough of being shot as it is, and we will play this game out upon the
old lines, until I win it."

"As you like," said Harold. "I have made a suggestion to you which you
do not see fit to accept. As to the end of the game, it is not
finished yet, and therefore it is impossible to say who will win it.
Perhaps you will be checkmated after all. In the meanwhile allow me
again to assure you that I consider you both a cur and a blackguard,
and to wish you good-morning." And he bowed himself out, leaving
Edward Cossey in a curious condition of concentrated rage.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE COLONEL GOES TO SLEEP

The state of mind is difficult to picture which could induce a
peaceable christian-natured individual, who had moreover in the course
of his career been mixed up with enough bloodshed to have acquired a
thorough horror of it, to offer to fight a duel. Yet this state had
been reached by Harold Quaritch.

Edward Cossey wisely enough declined to entertain the idea, but the
Colonel had been perfectly in earnest about it. Odd as it may appear
in the latter end of this nineteenth century, nothing would have given
him greater pleasure than to put his life against that of his unworthy
rival. Of course, it was foolish and wrong, but human nature is the
same in all ages, and in the last extremity we fall back by instinct
on those methods which men have from the beginning adopted to save
themselves from intolerable wrong and dishonour, or, be it admitted,
to bring the same upon others.

But Cossey utterly declined to fight. As he said, he had had enough of
being shot, and so there was an end of it. Indeed, in after days the
Colonel frequently looked back upon this episode in his career with
shame not unmingled with amusement, reflecting when he did so on the
strang