Part I - Page 2

die.

The enemy appeared, - approached. Waving his black flag, the
colonel attacked. Confusion ensued. Anxiously I awaited my
signal; but my signal came not. So far from falling, the hated
Drowvey in spectacles appeared to me to have muffled the colonel's
head in his outlawed banner, and to be pitching into him with a
parasol. The one in the lavender bonnet also performed prodigies
of valour with her fists on his back. Seeing that all was for the
moment lost, I fought my desperate way hand to hand to the lane.
Through taking the back road, I was so fortunate as to meet nobody,
and arrived there uninterrupted.

It seemed an age ere the colonel joined me. He had been to the
jobbing tailor's to be sewn up in several places, and attributed
our defeat to the refusal of the detested Drowvey to fall. Finding
her so obstinate, he had said to her, 'Die, recreant!' but had
found her no more open to reason on that point than the other.

My blooming bride appeared, accompanied by the colonel's bride, at
the dancing-school next day. What? Was her face averted from me?
Hah? Even so. With a look of scorn, she put into my hand a bit of
paper, and took another partner. On the paper was pencilled,
'Heavens! Can I write the word? Is my husband a cow?'

In the first bewilderment of my heated brain, I tried to think what
slanderer could have traced my family to the ignoble animal
mentioned above. Vain were my endeavours. At the end of that
dance I whispered the colonel to come into the cloak-room, and I
showed him the note.

'There is a syllable wanting,' said he, with a gloomy brow.

'Hah! What syllable?' was my inquiry.

'She asks, can she write the word? And no; you see she couldn't,'
said the colonel, pointing out the passage.

'And the word was?' said I.

'Cow - cow - coward,' hissed the pirate-colonel in my ear, and gave
me back the note.

Feeling that I must for ever tread the earth a branded boy, -
person I mean, - or that I must clear up my honour, I demanded to
be tried by a court-martial. The colonel admitted my right to be
tried. Some difficulty was found in composing the court, on
account of the Emperor of France's aunt refusing to let him come
out. He was to be the president. Ere yet we had appointed a
substitute, he made his escape over the back-wall, and stood among
us, a free monarch.

The court was held on the grass by the pond. I recognised, in a
certain admiral among my judges, my deadliest foe. A cocoa-nut had
given rise to language that I could not brook; but confiding in my
innocence, and also in the knowledge that the President of the
United States (who sat next him) owed me a knife, I braced myself
for the ordeal.

It