Ose at your leisure whether you'd rather be defendant in a suit for breach of promise or seduction; and, upon my conscience, I think it's civil in me to give you a choice." What a pretty disclosure was here! So that while I was imaging myself squeezing the hand and winning the heart of the fair Mary Anne, I was merely making a case of strong evidence for a jury, that might expose me to the world, and half ruin me in damages. There was but one course open--to make a fight for it; and, from what I saw of my friend Mark Anthony, this did not seem difficult. I accordingly assumed a high tone--laughed at the entire affair--said it was a "way we had in the army"--that "we never meant any thing by it," &c. &c. In a few minutes I perceived the bait was taking. Mr. Fitzpatrick's west country blood was up: all thought of the legal resource was abandoned; and he flung out of the room to find a friend, I having given him the name of "one of ours" as mine upon the occasion. Very little time was lost, for before three o'clock that afternoon a meeting was fixed for the following morning at the North Bull; and I had the satisfaction of hearing that I only escaped the malignant eloquence of Holmes in the King's Bench, to be "blazed" at by the best shot on the western circuit. The thought was no way agreeable, and I indemnified myself for the scrape by a very satisfactory anathema upon the high sheriff and his ball, and his confounded saucepans; for to the lady's sympathy for my sufferings I attributed much of my folly. At eight the next morning I found myself standing with Curzon and the doctor upon that bleak portion of her majesty's dominion they term the North Bull, waiting in a chilly rain, and a raw fog, till it pleased Mark Anthony Fitzpatrick, to come and shoot me--such being the precise terms of our combat, in the opinion of all parties
