"I will!"
"You promise me then?"
"I do!"
I was conscious of the increased activity of my organ of
destructiveness as I said these words. I smiled with a feeling
of pleasant bitterness--that spicy sort of malice which you may
sometimes rouse in the bosom of the best-natured man in the world,
by an attempt to do him injustice. The wound I had received, though
very trifling, had no little to do with this determination. It
was not unlike such a wound as would be made by a smart stroke of
a whip, and the effect upon my blood was pretty much as if it had
been inflicted by some such instrument. I was stung and irritated
by it, and the pertinacity of my enemy, particularly as he must
have seen that my shot was thrown away, decided me to punish him
if I could. I did so! I was not conscious that I was hurt myself,
until I saw him falling!--I then felt a heavy and numbing sensation
in the same thigh which had been touched before. A faintness relieved
me from present sensibility, and when I became conscious, I found
myself in the carriage, supported by Kingsley and the surgeon, on
my way to my lodgings. My wound was a flesh wound only; the ball
was soon extracted, and in a few weeks after, I was enabled to
move about with scarcely a feeling of inconvenience. My opponent
suffered a much heavier penalty. The bone of his leg was fractured,
and it was several months before he was considered perfectly safe.
The lesson he got made him a sorer and shorter--a wiser, if not a
better man; but as I do not now, and did not then, charge myself
with the task of bringing about his moral improvement, it is not
incumbent upon me to say anything further on this subject. We will
leave him to get better as he may.