Both fired simultaneously, with the result that May escaped unhurt, while Cocheran was shot through the head and instantly killed.
Public opinion, indeed, around Kennedy Square, was, if the truth be told, undergoing many and serious changes.

For not only the duel but some other of the traditional customs dear to the old regime were falling into disrepute--especially the open sideboards, synonymous with the lavish hospitality of the best houses.

While most of the older heads, brought up on the finer and rarer wines, knew to a glass the limit of their endurance, the younger bloods were constantly losing control of themselves, a fact which was causing the greatest anxiety among the mothers of Kennedy Square.
This growing antipathy had been hastened and solidified by another tragedy quite as widely discussed as the Cocheran and May duel--more so, in fact, since this particular victim of too many toddies had been the heir of one of the oldest residents about Kennedy Square--a brilliant young surgeon, self-exiled because of his habits, who had been thrown from his horse on the Indian frontier--an Iowa town, really--shattering his leg and making its amputation necessary.

There being but one other man in the rough camp who had ever seen a knife used--and he but a student--the wounded surgeon had directed the amputation himself, even to the tying of the arteries and the bandages and splints.

Only then did he collapse.