.

Wherein the two Georges prepare for Blood.
The Virginian Colonel remained in one chamber of the tavern, occupied with gloomy preparations for the ensuing meeting; his adversary in the other room thought fit to make his testamentary dispositions, too, and dictated, by his obedient brother and secretary, a grandiloquent letter to his mother, of whom, and by that writing, he took a solemn farewell.
She would hardly, he supposed, pursue the scheme which she had in view (a peculiar satirical emphasis was laid upon the scheme which she had in view), after the event of that morning, should he fall, as, probably, would be the case.
"My dear, dear George, don't say that!" cried the affrighted secretary.
"'As probably will be the case,'" George persisted with great majesty.
"You know what a good shot Colonel George is, Harry.

I, myself, am pretty fair at a mark, and 'tis probable that one or both of us will drop.--'I scarcely suppose you will carry out the intentions you have at present in view.'" This was uttered in a tone of still greater bitterness than George had used even in the previous phrase.

Harry wept as he took it down.
"You see I say nothing; Madame Esmond's name does not even appear in the quarrel.

Do you not remember in our grandfather's life of himself, how he says that Lord Castlewood fought Lord Mohun on a pretext of a quarrel at cards?
and never so much as hinted at the lady's name, who was the real cause of the duel?
I took my hint, I confess, from that, Harry.
Our mother is not compromised in the--Why, child, what have you been writing, and who taught thee to spell ?" Harry had written the last words "in view," in vew, and a great blot of salt water from his honest, boyish eyes may have obliterated some other bad spelling.
"I can't think about the spelling now, Georgy," whimpered George's clerk.