siness, an' I'll not disgrace you, _if_ I'm spared to see
it out.'

And now preliminaries were quite adjusted; and Nutter, light and wiry, a
good swordsman, though not young, stepped out with his vicious weapon in
hand, and his eyes looking white and stony out of his dark face. A word
or two to his armour-bearer, and a rapid gesture, right and left, and
that magnificent squire spoke low to two or three of the surrounding
officers, who forthwith bestirred themselves to keep back the crowd, and
as it were to keep the ring unbroken. O'Flaherty took his sword, got his
hand well into the hilt, poised the blade, shook himself up as it were,
and made a feint or two and a parry in the air, and so began to advance,
like Goliath, towards little Nutter.

'Now, Puddock, back him up--encourage your man,' said Devereux, who took
a perverse pleasure in joking; 'tell him to flay the lump, splat him,
divide him, and cut him in two pieces----.

It was a custom of the corps to quiz Puddock about his cookery; but
Puddock, I suppose, did not hear his last night's 'receipt' quoted, and
he kept his eye upon his man, who had now got nearly within fencing
distance of his adversary. But at this critical moment, O'Flaherty, much
to Puddock's disgust, suddenly stopped, and got into the old stooping
posture, making an appalling grimace in what looked like an endeavour to
swallow, not only his under lip, but his chin also. Uttering a
quivering, groan, he continued to stoop nearer to the earth, on which he
finally actually sat down and hugged his knees close to his chest,
holding his breath all the time till he was perfectly purple, and
rocking himself this way and that.

The whole procedure was a mystery to everybody except the guilty
Puddock, who changed colour, and in manifest perturbation, skipped to
his side.

'Bleth me--bleth me--my dear O'Flaherty, he'th very ill--where ith the
pain?'

'Is it "farced pain," Puddock, or "gammon pain?"' asked Devereux, with
much concern.

Puddock's plump panic-stricken little face, and staring eye-balls, were
approached close to the writhing features of his redoubted principal--as
I think I have seen honest Sancho Panza's, in one of Tony Johannot's
sketches, to that of the prostrate Knight of the Rueful Countenance.

'I wish to Heaven I had thwallowed it myself--it'th dreadful--what ith
to be--are you eathier--I _think_ you're eathier.'

I don't think O'Flaherty heard him. He only hugged his knees tig