th this persuasion I went to bed, somewhat calmer than I should
otherwise have been; nay, I was even composed enough to divert myself
with the folly of one bearing so vulgar an appellation taking it into
his head to play the _man of honor_, and could not help a waggish
feeling of curiosity to see if his name and person were in keeping.

I woke myself in the morning with a loud laugh, for I had dreamt of
meeting, in the redoubtable Mr. Bub, a little pot-bellied man, with a
round face, a red snub-nose, and a pair of gooseberry wall-eyes. My
fit of pleasantry was far from passed off when I came in sight of the
fatal elms. I saw my antagonist pacing the ground with considerable
violence. Ah! said I, he is trying to escape from his unheroic name!
and I laughed again at the conceit; but, as I drew a little nearer,
there appeared a majestic altitude in his figure very unlike what I
had seen in my dream, and my laugh began to stiffen into a kind of
rigid grin. There now came upon me something very like a misgiving
that the affair might turn out to be no joke. I felt an unaccountable
wish that this Mr. Bub had never been born; still I advanced: but
if an aerolite had fallen at my feet, I could not have been more
startled, than when I found in the person of my challenger--the
mysterious stranger. The consequences of my curiosity immediately
rushed upon me, and I was no longer at a loss in what way I had
injured him. All my merriment seemed to curdle within me; and I felt
like a dog that had got his head into a jug, and suddenly finds he
cannot extricate it. "Well met, Sir," said the stranger; "now
take your ground, and abide the consequences of your infernal
insinuations." "Upon my word," replied I,--"upon my honor, Sir,"--and
there I stuck, for in truth I knew not what it was I was going to say;
when the stranger's second, advancing, exclaimed, in a voice which
I immediately recognized, "Why, zounds! Rainbow, are _you_ the
man?" "Is it you, Harman?" "What!" continued he, "my old classmate
Rainbow turned slanderer? Impossible! Indeed, Mr. Bub, there must be
some mistake here." "None, Sir," said the stranger; "I have it on
the authority of my respectable landlord, that, ever since this
gentleman's arrival, he has been incessant in his attempts to blacken
my character with every person at the inn." "Nay, my friend"--But I
put an end to Harman's further defence of me, by taking him aside,
and frankly confessing the whole truth. It w