 person would be least endangered. Our adventurer seeing him
alone, advanced with speed, and clapping a pistol to his breast, commanded him
to follow his footsteps, without noise, on pain of immediate death.
    Terrified at this sudden apparition, Hornbeck obeyed in silence; and in a
few minutes they arrived at the quay, where Pickle halting, gave him to
understand, that he was no stranger to his villainous design; and told him, that
if he conceived himself injured by any circumstance of his conduct, he would now
give him an opportunity of resenting the wrong, in a manner becoming a man of
honour. »You have a sword about you, (said he) or if you don't choose to put the
affair on that issue, here is a brace of pistols, take which you please.« Such
an address could not fail to disconcert a man of his character. After some
hesitation, he in a faultering accent denied that his design was to mutilate Mr.
Pickle, but that he thought himself intitled to the benefit of the law, by which
he would have obtained a divorce, if he could have procured evidence of his
wife's infidelity; and with that view had employed people to take advantage of
the information he had received. With regard to his alternative, he declined it
intirely, because he could not see what satisfaction he should enjoy, in being
shot through the head, or run through the lungs, by a person who had already
wronged him in an irreparable manner; and lastly, his fear made him propose,
that the affair should be left to the arbitration of two creditable men,
altogether unconcerned in the dispute.
    To these remonstrances, Peregrine replied, in the stile of a hotheaded young
man, conscious of his own unjustifiable behaviour, that every gentleman ought to
be a judge of his own honour; and therefore he would submit to the decision of
no umpire whatsoever; that he would forgive his want of courage, which might be
a natural infirmity, but his mean dissimulation he could not pardon; and that,
as he was certified of the rascally intent of his ambuscade, by undoubted
intelligence, he would treat him, not with a retaliation of his own treachery,
but with such indignity as a scoundrel deserves to suffer; unless he would make
one effort to maintain the character he assumed in life: so saying, he again
presented his pistol, which being rejected as before, he called his two
ministers, and ordered them to duck him in the canal.
    This command was pronounced and executed almost in the same breath, to the
