candles.

"Massa Grafton, suh," he said.

My uncle was close at his heels. He was soberly dressed in dark brown
silk, and his face wore that expression of sorrow and concern he knew how
to assume at will. After greeting his father with his usual ceremony, he
came to my bedside and asked gravely how I did.

"How now, Grafton!" cried Mr. Carvel; "this is no funeral. The lad has
only a scratch, thank God!"

My uncle looked at me and forced a smile.

"Indeed I am rejoiced to find you are not worried over this matter,
father," said he. "I am but just back from Kent to learn of it, and
looked to find you in bed."

"Why, no, sir, I am not worried. I fought a duel in my own day,--over a
lass, it was."

This time Grafton's smile was not forced.

"Over a lass, was it?" he asked, and added in a tone of relief, "and how
do you, nephew?"

Mr. Carvel saved me from replying.

"'Od's life!" he cried; "no, I did not say this was over a lass. I have
heard the whole matter; how Captain Collinson, who is a disgrace to the
service, brought shame upon his Majesty's supporters, and how Richard
felled the young lord instead. I'll be sworn, and I had been there, I
myself would have run the brute through."

My uncle did not ask for further particulars, but took a chair, and a
dish of tea from Scipio. His smug look told me plainer than words that
he thought my grandfather still ignorant of my Whig sentiments.

"I often wish that this deplorable practice of duelling might be
legislated against," he remarked. "Was there no one at the Coffee House
with character enough to stop the lads?"

Here was my chance.

"Mr. Allen was there," I said.

"A devil's plague upon him!" shouted my grandfather, beating the floor
with his stick. "And the lying hypocrite ever crosses my path, by gad's
life! I'll tear his gown from his back!"

I watched Grafton narrowly. Such as he never turn pale, but he set down
his tea so hastily as to spill the most of it on the dresser.

"Why, you astound me, my dear father!" he faltered; "Mr. Allen a lying
hypocrite? What can he have done?"

"Done!" cried my grandfather, sputtering and red as a cherry with
indignation. "He is as rotten within as a pricked pear, I tell you, sir!
For the sake of retaining the lad in his tuition he came to me and lied,
sir, just after I had escaped death, and said that by his influence
Richard had become loyal, and set dependence upon Richard's fear of the
shock 'twould give me