re, clear away all these people. Be off with you. What are you
staring at? Did you never see an English gentleman meet with an
accident before? Oh, dear me! Oh, my conscience! Bless my heart, I
shall never get over this."

The dealer went about from one to the other of the passers-by who had
crowded in, and the grave gentlemanly Turks bowed and left in the most
courteous manner, while the others, a very motley assembly, showed some
disposition to stay, but were eventually persuaded to go outside, and
the door was closed.

"To think of me, a grave quiet solicitor, being reduced to such a
position as this. I'm crippled for life. I know I am. Serves me right
for coming. Here, give me a little brandy or a glass of wine."

The latter was brought directly, and the old lawyer drank it, with the
result that it seemed to make him more angry.

"Here, you, sir!" he cried to the dealer, who was most attentive; "what
have you to say for yourself? It's a wonder that I did not shoot one of
my friends here. That gun ought to be destroyed."

"My dear Burne," said the professor, who had taken the fowling-piece and
tried the locks, cocking and recocking them over and over again; "the
piece seems to me to be in very perfect order."

"Bah! stuff! What do you know about guns?"

"Certainly I have not used one much lately, and many improvements have
been made since I used to go shooting; but still I do know how to handle
a gun."

"Then, sir," cried the little lawyer in a towering fury, "perhaps you
will be good enough to tell me how it was that this confounded piece of
mechanism went off in my hands?"

"Simply," said the professor smiling, "because you drew both the
triggers at once."

"It is false, sir. I just rested my fingers upon them as you are doing
now."

"And the piece went off!" said the professor drily, but smiling the
while. "It is a way that all guns and pistols have."

The dealer smiled his thanks, and Mr Burne started up in the chair, but
threw himself back again.

"Oh, dear! oh, my gracious me!" he groaned; "and you two grinning at me
and rejoicing over my sufferings."

"My dear sir, indeed I am very sorry," said the dealer.

"Yes, I know you are," said Mr Burne furiously, "because you think, and
rightly, that I will not buy your precious gun. Bless my heart, how it
does hurt! I feel as if I should never be able to sit up again. I know
my vertebrae are all loose like a string of beads."

"W