l gave forth the token of success.

"Give me the word--one--two," cried out Davis to the man who loaded and
handed him the pistols. "One--two," called out the other; and the same
instant rang out the bell, and the ball was true to its mark.

"What a shot,--what a _deadly_ shot!" muttered Beecher, as a cold
shudder came over him.

As quickly as he could take the weapons, Davis now fired;
four--five--six balls went in succession through the tiny circle, the
bell tinkling on and never ceasing, so rapidly did shot follow upon
shot, till, as if sated with success, he turned away, saying, "I' ll try
to-morrow blindfold!"

"I'm certain," muttered Beecher, "no man is bound to go out with a
fellow like that. A duel is meant to be a hazard, not a dead certainty!
To stand before him at twenty--ay, forty paces, is a suicide, neither
more nor less; he must kill you. I'd insist on his fighting across a
handkerchief. I 'd say, 'Let us stand foot to foot!'" No, Beecher, not
a bit of it; you 'd say nothing of the kind, nor, if you did, would it
avail you! Your craven heart could not beat were those stern gray eyes
fixed upon you, looking death into you from a yard off. He 'd shoot you
down as pitilessly, too, at one distance as at the other.

Was it in the fulness of a conviction that his faltering lips tried
to deny, that he threw himself back upon a chair, while a cold, clammy
sweat covered his face and forehead, a sickness like death crept over
him, objects grew dim to his eyes, and the room seemed to turn and swim
before him? Where was his high daring now? Where the boastful spirit in
which he had declared himself free, no more the slave of Grog's insolent
domination, nor basely cowering before his frown? Oh, the ineffable
bitterness. Of that thought, coming, too, in revulsion to all his late
self-gratulations! Where was the glorious emancipation he had dreamed
of, now? He could not throw him into prison, it is true, but he could
lay him in a grave.

"But I 'd not meet him," whispered he to himself. "One is not bound to
meet a man of this sort."

There is something marvellously accommodating and elastic in the phrase,
"One is not bound" to do this, that, and t' other. As the said bond is
a contract between oneself and an imaginary world, its provisions are
rarely onerous or exacting. Life is full of things "one is not bound
to do." You are "not bound," for instance, to pay your father's debts,
though, it might be, they were