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 CHAPTER XV.

THE CAPTAIN TRUMPS MY TRICK.

I am now come to some grave adventures. Even at the remote hour at which I here retail them, I hardly know whether to shudder or to smile, so whimsical they were, yet so fraught with consequences of the gravest sort. Indeed, their memory seems a quaint mingling of laughter and dismay. There is, I think, scarcely an event in life that cannot be made food for ridicule by the lightly-minded. In that category I count one, my kind friends tell me, but of the strange duel that was fought at which I presided in my person, of the conflict of wills and passions that befel, of the hopes, the fears, the plottings, the contrivings, the general foxiness of everyone, but most of all of me; the stern contentions that appeared to some of us to turn the whole world topsy-turvy, I could not at the time decide whether to grin or groan at. And faith! even at this date, I am not come to a decision.

The very night of the Corporal's detention and release was the date of the first of these important matters. The hour was midnight, or rather more, when I got into bed. The day with me had been so