win the day, and to leave the man he was fighting
with nearly blind with two swollen black eyes. And every one said what
`pluck' little Saunders showed."

"Had the bargeman a wife and children?" asked Miss Huntingdon quietly,
after a few moments' silence.

"What a strange question, auntie!" cried her nephew laughing. "Oh, I'm
sure I don't know. I daresay he had."

"But I suppose, Walter, he was a plain working-man, who got bread for
himself and his family by his work on the canal."

"Oh, of course, auntie; but what has that to do with it?"

"A very great deal, dear boy. There may have been plenty of pluck shown
by your friend Saunders on that occasion, but certainly no moral
courage. Indeed _I_ should call his conduct decidedly immoral and
cowardly."

"Cowardly, aunt!"

"Yes, cowardly, and mean. What right had he to use, or rather abuse,
his superior skill as a pugilist for the purpose of carrying out an act
of wrong-doing, and so to give pain and inflict loss on a plain working-
man who had done him no harm, and had not had the same advantages of
education as himself?"

"O aunt! you _are_ severe indeed."

"Not too severe, Walter. Saunders, you acknowledge, spoke and acted
hastily and improperly at first, and he must have known that he had done
so. Now the true moral courage would have been shown in his confessing
that he was wrong, and expressing sorrow for it."

"What! to a bargee!"

"Yes, to a bargee, Walter. The world might have called him mean or
cowardly for such a confession, but he would have shown true moral
courage and nobility for all that. To do what will give pain to others
rather than incur the reproach of cowardice is really acting under the
tyranny of a mean and slavish fear of man, though it may be a plucky
thing in the eyes of the World."

"Ah, well, auntie, that is certainly a new view of things to me; and I
suppose, then, you would apply the same test to duelling,--affairs of
honour, as they used to be called?"

"Most certainly so, Walter. The duellist is one of the worst of moral
cowards."

"Ah! but," cried the other, "to fight a duel used to be considered a
very plucky thing, and it really was so, auntie."

"I don't doubt it, Walter; but it was a very immoral thing also.
Happily, public opinion has quite changed on the subject of duelling in
our own country, and no doubt this has been owing indirectly to the
spread of a truer religious tone amongst us. But what could