stook you from the beginning. You
continentals--that's the new-fangled word--are stout fellows, and have a
good knack at the trick of war, though you wear rough coats, and are
savagely unrudimented in polite learning. No matter what colors a man
fights under, long usage makes a good comrade of him; and, by my faith!
I am not amongst the last to do him honor, even though we stand in
opposite ranks. As you say, most sapient Brimstone, we are not much
better than a pair of fools for this conspiracy to knock about each
other's pates, here at midnight; but you have my pledge to it, and so,
we will go at it, if it be only to win a relish for our beds; I will
teach you, to-night, some skill in the art of mensuration. You shall
measure two full ells upon this green sod."

"There's my hand," said Horse Shoe; "now, if I am flung, I promise you
I won't be angry. If I sarve you in the same fashion, you must larn to
bear it."

"With all my heart. So here I stand upon my guard. Begin."

"Let me feel your weight," said Robinson, laughing, as he put one hand
upon his adversary's shoulder, and the other against his side. "Hark
you, master, I feel something hard here about your ribs; you have
pistols under your coat, friend. For the sake of fair play and keeping
rid of foul blood, you had best lay them aside before we strike. Anger
comes up onawares."

"I never part from my weapons," replied the other, stepping back and
releasing himself from Robinson's grasp. "We are strangers; I must know
the company I am in, before I dismiss such old cronies as these. They
have got me out of a scrape before this."

"We took hands just now," said Robinson, angrily. "When I give my hand,
it is tantamount to a book oath that I mean fair, round dealing with the
man who takes it. I told you, besides, I was a sodger--that ought to
have contented you--and you mought sarch my breast, inside and out,
you'd seen in it nothing but honest meanings. There's something of a
suspectable rascality, after that, in talking about pistols hid under
the flaps of the coat. It's altogether onmanful, and, what's more,
onsodgerly. You are a deceit, and an astonishment, and a hissing, all
three, James Curry, and no better, to my comprehension, than a coward. I
know you of old, although, mayhap, you disremember me. I have hearn
said, by more than one, that you was a double-faced, savage-hearted,
disregardless beast, that snashed his teeth where he darsn't bite, and
bullied