fainted when told her lover was about to fight a duel; finally, that she
had accepted him, and would marry him as soon as the quarrel between him
and the captain was settled. Dr. Sly, when applied to, hummed and ha'd,
and would give no direct answer; but he denied nothing, and looked so
knowing, that all the world was certain of the fact; and the county
paper next week stated:--

"We understand that the lovely and wealthy Mrs. Bl--b--rd is
about once more to enter the bands of wedlock with our
distinguished townsman, Frederick S--y, Esq., of the Middle
Temple, London. The learned gentleman left town in consequence
of a dispute with a gallant son of Mars, which was likely to
have led to warlike results, had not a magistrate's warrant
intervened, when the captain was bound over to keep the peace."

In fact, as soon as the captain was so bound over, Mr. Sly came back,
stating that he had quitted the town not to avoid a duel,--far from it,
but to keep out of the way of the magistrates, and give the captain
every facility. _He_ had taken out no warrant; _he_ had been perfectly
ready to meet the captain; if others had been more prudent, it was not
his fault. So he held up his head, and cocked his hat with the most
determined air; and all the lawyers' clerks in the place were quite
proud of their hero.

As for Captain Blackbeard, his rage and indignation may be imagined; a
wife robbed from him, his honor put in question by an odious, lanky,
squinting lawyer! He fell ill of a fever incontinently; and the surgeon
was obliged to take a quantity of blood from him, ten times the amount
of which he swore he would have out of the veins of the atrocious Sly.

The announcement in "The Mercury," however, filled the widow with almost
equal indignation. "The widow of the gallant Bluebeard," she said,
"marry an odious wretch who lives in dingy chambers in the Middle
Temple! Send for Dr. Sly." The doctor came; she rated him soundly, asked
him how he dared set abroad such calumnies concerning her; ordered him
to send his nephew back to London at once; and as he valued her esteem,
as he valued the next presentation to a fat living which lay in her
gift, to contradict everywhere, and in the fullest terms, the wicked
report concerning her.

"My dearest madam," said the doctor, pulling his longest face, "you
shall be obeyed. The poor lad shall be acquainted with the fatal change
in your sentiments!"

"Change