“Since my Lord refuses me satisfaction, which I deeply regret, there is no time so good as now,” says my Lord Mohun.  “Let us have chairs and go to Leicester Field.”

“Are your lordship and I to have the honor of exchanging a pass or two?” says Colonel Westbury, with a low bow to my Lord of Warwick and Holland.

“It is an honor for me,” says my lord, with a profound congee, “to be matched with a gentleman who has been at Mons and Namur.”

“Will your Reverence permit me to give you a lesson?” says the Captain.

“Nay, nay, gentlemen, two on a side are plenty,” says Harry’s patron.  “Spare the boy, Captain Macartney,” and he shook Harry’s hand—­for the last time, save one, in his life.

At the bar of the tavern all the gentlemen stopped, and my Lord Viscount said, laughing, to the barwoman, that those cards set people sadly a-quarrelling; but that the dispute was over now, and the parties were all going away to my Lord Mohun’s house, in Bow Street, to drink a bottle more before going to bed.

A half-dozen of chairs were now called, and the six gentlemen stepping into them, the word was privately given to the chairmen to go to Leicester Field, where the gentlemen were set down opposite the “Standard Tavern.”  It was midnight, and the town was abed by this time, and only a few lights in the windows of the houses; but the night was bright enough for the unhappy purpose which the disputants came about; and so all six entered into that fatal square, the chairmen standing without the railing and keeping the gate, lest any persons should disturb the meeting.

All that happened there hath been matter of public notoriety, and is recorded, for warning to lawless men, in the annals of our country.  After being engaged for not more than a couple of minutes, as Harry Esmond thought (though being occupied at the time with his own adversary’s point, which was active, he may not have taken a good note of time), a cry from the chairmen without, who were smoking their pipes, and leaning over the railings of the field as they watched the dim combat within, announced that some catastrophe had happened, which caused Esmond to drop his sword and look round, at which moment his enemy wounded him in the right hand.  But the young man did not heed this hurt much, and ran up to the place where he saw his dear master was down.

My Lord Mohun was standing over him.

“Are you much hurt, Frank?” he asked in a hollow voice.

“I believe I am a dead man,” my lord said from the ground.

“No, no, not so,” says the other; “and I call God to witness, Frank Esmond, that I would have asked your pardon, had you but given me a chance.  In—­in the first cause of our falling out, I swear that no one was to blame but me, and—­and that my lady—­”

“Hush!” says my poor Lord Viscount, lifting himself on his elbow and speaking faintly. “’Twas a dispute about the cards—­the cursed cards.  Harry my boy, are you wounded, too?  God help thee!  I loved thee, Harry, and thou must watch over my little Frank—­and—­and carry this little heart to my wife.”