"Your lordship flatters me!" returned Lovett, bowing. "How do you decide?"
"Why, is it possible to write drafts without ink, pen, or paper?"
Lovett drew back, and while he was searching in his pockets for writing implements, which he always carried about him, the traveller seized the opportunity, and suddenly snatching a pistol from the pocket of the carriage, levelled it full at the head of the robber. The traveller was an excellent and practised shot,—he was almost within arm's length of his intended victim,—his pistols were the envy of all his Irish friends. He pulled the trigger,—the powder flashed in the pan; and the highwayman, not even changing countenance, drew forth a small ink-bottle, and placing a steel pen in it, handed it to the nobleman, saying, with incomparable sanq froid: "Would you like, my lord, to try the other pistol? If so, oblige me by a quick aim, as you must see the necessity of despatch. If not, here is the back of a letter, on which you can write the draft."
The traveller was not a man apt to become embarrassed in anything save his circumstances; but he certainly felt a little discomposed and confused as he took the paper, and uttering some broken words, wrote the check. The highwayman glanced over it, saw it was written according to form, and then with a bow of cool respect, returned the watch, and shut the door of the carriage.
Meanwhile the servant had been shivering in front, boxed up in that solitary convenience termed, not euphoniously, a dickey. Him the robber now briefly accosted.
"What have you got about you belonging to your master?" "Only his pills, your honour! which I forgot to put in the—"
"Pills!—throw them down to me!" The valet tremblingly extricated from his side-pocket a little box, which he threw down and Lovett caught in his hand.
He opened the box, counted the pills,—"One, two, four, twelve,—aha!"
He reopened the carriage door. "Are these your pills, my lord?"
The wondering peer, who had begun to resettle himself in the corner of his carriage, answered that they were.
"My lord, I see you are in a high state of fever; you were a little delirious just now when you snapped a pistol in your friend's face. Permit me to recommend you a prescription,—swallow off all these pills!"