I woke myself in the morning with a loud laugh, for I had dreamt of meeting, in the redoubtable Mr. Bub, a little pot-bellied man, with a round face, a red snub-nose, and a pair of gooseberry wall-eyes.  My fit of pleasantry was far from passed off when I came in sight of the fatal elms.  I saw my antagonist pacing the ground with considerable violence.  Ah! said I, he is trying to escape from his unheroic name! and I laughed again at the conceit; but, as I drew a little nearer, there appeared a majestic altitude in his figure very unlike what I had seen in my dream, and my laugh began to stiffen into a kind of rigid grin.  There now came upon me something very like a misgiving that the affair might turn out to be no joke.  I felt an unaccountable wish that this Mr. Bub had never been born; still I advanced:  but if an aerolite had fallen at my feet, I could not have been more startled, than when I found in the person of my challenger—­the mysterious stranger.  The consequences of my curiosity immediately rushed upon me, and I was no longer at a loss in what way I had injured him.  All my merriment seemed to curdle within me; and I felt like a dog that had got his head into a jug, and suddenly finds he cannot extricate it.  “Well met, Sir,” said the stranger; “now take your ground, and abide the consequences of your infernal insinuations.”  “Upon my word,” replied I,—­“upon my honor, Sir,”—­and there I stuck, for in truth I knew not what it was I was going to say; when the stranger’s second, advancing, exclaimed, in a voice which I immediately recognized, “Why, zounds!  Rainbow, are you the man?” “Is it you, Harman?” “What!” continued he, “my old classmate Rainbow turned slanderer?  Impossible!  Indeed, Mr. Bub, there must be some mistake here.”  “None, Sir,” said the stranger; “I have it on the authority of my respectable landlord, that, ever since this gentleman’s arrival, he has been incessant in his attempts to blacken my character with every person at the inn.”  “Nay, my friend”—­But I put an end to Harman’s further defence of me, by taking him aside, and frankly confessing the whole truth.  It was with some difficulty I could get through the explanation, being frequently interrupted with bursts of laughter from my auditor; which, indeed, I now began to think very natural.  In a word, to cut the story short, my friend having repeated the conference verbatim to Mr. Bub, he was good-natured enough to join in the mirth, saying, with one of his best sardonics, he “had always had a misgiving that his unlucky ugly face would one day or other be the death of somebody.”  Well, we passed the day together, and having cracked a social bottle after dinner, parted, I believe, as heartily friends as we should have been (which is saying a great deal) had he indeed proved the favorite villain in my Novel.  But, alas! with the loss of my villain, away went the Novel.