of voice.

"I have not got it," answered the military man, trying to get away.

"Ah! you have not got it?" screamed a third personage, a woman emerging
from the doorway, and without further notice hit the soldier on the head
with the heavy wooden mallet commonly used for beating clothes.

The husband, encouraged by this unexpected reinforcement, boldly attacked
the soldier, and, whilst they were occupied in wrestling and trying to
knock each other down, the infuriated woman kept up a constant
administration of blows, half at least of which, in her aimless hurry,
were received by the companion of her life for whom she was fighting.
Once she hit the poor man so hard--by mistake--that he fell down in a
dead faint, upon which the soldier ran for his life, while she, jumping
like a tiger at him, caught him by the throat, spinned him round like a
top, and floored him, knocking him down on the ice. Then she pounced on
him, with her eyes out of her head with anger, and giving way to her
towering passion, pounded him on the head with her heels while she was
hitting him on the back with her mallet.

"You have killed my husband, too, you scoundrel!" she cried, while the
defeated warrior was struggling hard, though in vain, to escape.

As she was about to administer him a blow on the head that would have
been enough to kill a bull, she fortunately slipped on the ice and went
sprawling over her victim. The soldier, more dead than alive, had raised
himself on his knees, when that demon in female attire rose again and
embracing him most tenderly, bit his cheek so hard as to draw a regular
stream of blood. I could stand it no longer, and proceeded on to the
slippery ice to try to separate them, but hardly was I within reach than
I was presented with a sound blow on my left knee from the mallet which
she was still manipulating with alarming dexterity, by which I was at
once placed _hors de combat_ before I had time even to offer my services
as a peace-maker. Not only that, but besides the numberless "stars" which
she made me see, the pain which she caused me was so intense that,
hopping along as best I could on to the street again, I deemed it prudent
to let them fight out their own quarrel and go about my own business.

"Never again as long as I live," I swore, when I was well out of sight,
as I rubbed my poor knee, swollen up to the size of an egg, "never shall
I interfere in other people's quarrels. Who would have foreseen this?