Captain Scarborough had just come out of some neighboring club, where he had certainly been playing, and where, to all appearances, he had been drinking also.  That there should have been no policemen in the street was not remarkable, but there was no one else there present to give any account of what took place during the five minutes in which the two men remained together.  Harry, who was at the moment surprised by the encounter, would have passed the captain by without notice, had he been allowed to do so; but this the captain perceived, and stopped him suddenly, taking him roughly by the collar of his coat.  This Harry naturally resented, and before a word of intelligible explanation had been given the two young men had quarrelled.

Captain Scarborough had received a long letter from Mrs. Mountjoy, praying for explanation of circumstances which could not be explained, and stating over and over again that all her information had come from Harry Annesley.

The captain now called him an interfering, meddlesome idiot, and shook him violently while holding him in his grasp.  This was a usage which Harry was not the man to endure, and there soon arose a scuffle, in which blows had passed between them.  The captain stuck to his prey, shaking him again and again in his drunken wrath, till Harry, roused to a passion almost equal to that of his opponent, flung him at last against the corner of the club railings, and there left his foe sprawling upon the ground, having struck his head violently against the ground as he fell.  Harry passed on to his own bed, indifferent, as it was afterwards said, to the fate of his antagonist.  All this occupied probably five minutes in the doing, but was seen by no human eye.

As the occurrence of that night was subsequently made the ground for heavy accusation against Harry Annesley, it has been told here with sufficient minuteness to show what might be said in justification or in condemnation of his conduct,—­to show what might be said if the truth were spoken.  For, indeed, in the discussions which arose on the subject, much was said which was not true.  When he had retired from the scuffle on that night, Harry had certainly not dreamed that any serious damage had been done to the man who had certainly been altogether to blame in his provocation of the quarrel.  Had he kept his temper and feelings completely under control, and knocked down Captain Scarborough only in self-defence; had he not allowed himself to be roused to wrath by treatment which could not but give rise to wrath in a young man’s bosom, no doubt, when his foe lay at his feet, he would have stooped to pick him up, and have tended his wounds.  But such was not Harry’s character,—­nor that of any of the young men with whom I have been acquainted.  Such, however, was the conduct apparently expected from him by many, when the circumstances of those five minutes were brought to the light.  But, on the other hand, had passion not completely got the better of him, had he not at the moment considered the attack made upon him to amount to misconduct so gross as to supersede all necessity for gentle usage on his own part, he would hardly have left the man to live or die as chance would have it.  Boiling with passion, he went his way, and did leave the man on the pavement, not caring much, or rather, not thinking much, whether his victim might live or die.