The Judge is interrupted in his remarks by the entrance of Mr. Snivel, who, with hectic face, and flushed eyes, comes rushing into the chamber.  “Hollo!—­old boy, there’s a high bid on your head to-night.  Ready to do you a bit of a good turn, you see.”  Mr. Snivel runs his fingers through his hair, and works his shoulders with an air of exultation.  “If,” he continues, “that weak-minded fellow-that Mullholland we have shown some respect to, hasn’t got a pistol!  He’s been furbishing it up while in the parlor, and swears he will seriously damage you with it.  Blasted assurance, those Northerners have.  Won’t fight, can’t make ’em gentlemen; and if you knock ’em down they don’t understand enough of chivalry to resent it.  They shout to satisfy their fear and not to maintain their honor.  Keep an eye out!”

The Judge, in a tone of cool indifference, says he has no fears of the renegade, and will one of these days have the pleasure of sending him to the whipping-post.

“As to that, Judge,” interposes Mr. Snivel, “I have already prepared the preliminaries.  I gave him the trifle you desired-to-morrow I will nail him at the Keno crib.”  With this the Judge and the Justice each take an affectionate leave of the frail girl, and, as it is now past one o’clock in the morning, an hour much profaned in Charleston, take their departure.

Armed with a revolver Mullholland has taken up his position in the street, where he awaits the coming of his adversaries.  In doubt and anxiety, he reflects and re-reflects, recurs to the associations of his past life, and hesitates.  Such reflections only bring more vividly to his mind the wrong he feels himself the victim of, and has no power to resent except with violence.  His contemplations only nerve him to revenge.

A click, and the door cautiously opens, as if some votary of crime was about to issue forth in quest of booty.  The hostess’ heed protrudes suddenly from the door, she scans first up and then down the street, then withdraws it.  The Judge and Mr. Snivel, each in turn, shake the landlady by the hand, and emerge into the street.  They have scarce stepped upon the sidepath when the report of a pistol resounds through the air.  The ball struck a lamp-post, glanced, passed through the collar of Judge Sleepyhorn’s coat, and brushed Mr. Snivel’s fashionable whiskers.  Madame Ashley, successor to Madame Flamingo, shrieks and alarms the house, which is suddenly thrown into a state of confusion.  Acting upon the maxim of discretion being the better part of valor, the Judge and the Justice beat a hasty retreat into the house, and secrete themselves in a closet at the further end of the back-parlor.

As if suddenly moved by some strange impulse, Madame Ashley runs from room to room, screaming at the very top of her voice, and declaring that she saw the assassin enter her house.  Females rush from their rooms and into the great parlor, where they form groups of living statuary, strange and grotesque.  Anxious faces-faces half painted, faces hectic of dissipation, faces waning and sallow, eyes glassy and lascivious, dishevelled hair floating over naked shoulders;—­the flashing of bewitching drapery, the waving and flitting of embroidered underskirts, the tripping of pretty feet and prettier ankles, the gesticulating and swaying of half-draped bodies-such is the scene occasioned by the bench and the bar.