Margari instantly stood up in the middle of a sentence, marked the passage with his thumb-nail so as to know at what word to begin again on the following evening, turned down the leaf and closed the book.
"Well! is that the end of it ?" enquired Mr.Demetrius in angry amazement.
"I humbly beg your honour's pardon," said Margari with meek intrepidity, "there's nothing about reading _after six_ in our agreement"-- and off he went.

Mr.Demetrius thereupon flew into a violent rage, cursed and swore, vowed that he would dismiss his reader on the spot, and as the morning grew lighter fell into a deep, death-like, narcotic sleep from which he would not have awakened if the house had come tumbling about his ears.

When he did awake, about ten o'clock, his first care was to make enquiries about Mr.John.Then he sent the porter to the police station to inform the authorities that his son and Mr.Hatszegi, who were both staying at the Queen of England inn, were going to fight a duel, which should be prevented at all hazards.

A police constable, at this announcement, flung himself into a hackney-coach and set off at full speed to make enquiries.

Half an hour later a heyduke was sent back to the porter to tell him that either the whole affair must be a hoax, as nothing was known of a duel, or else that the two combatants must already be dead and buried, as not a word could be heard of either of them.