"More knocked out," replied the colonel, with an answering smile. "I'm not wasting much sympathy over him, for he wasn't exactly the style of man I like. Why, Kenryck, instead of getting up and going for Pender, he slunk off quietly and, all by himself, hatched up a dirty little scheme for squaring the account without running further risk of getting a black eye.
"In some way he'd got hold of Pender's war record, and, learning that he shortly was to come across to this side, he made off, post-haste, for Boston, where he set to work very industriously to arrange a proper reception for the man who had presumed to punch his patriotic nose. I must admit that he did his work very nicely, and the first results probably were quite gratifying to him, for about as soon as Pender set foot in this town he was arrested under a warrant charging piracy, and murder on the high seas, and pretty much every cheerful sort of crime and misdemeanor, all on account of his little escapade on the Halifax, eight years before. It was at this stage of the game that I was called upon to take a hand."
"Why, I'm blessed if I can see—" began Kenryck.
"How the charges could be supported, eh?" said the colonel, finishing his question for him. "Well, they couldn't be, and weren't. The case never came to trial, for we were able to show the facts of the matter in the proper light, and with less trouble than I had dared hope. But I had to trot up bail to the amount of fifteen thousand before I could put Pender into more congenial quarters, and, first and last, I wasted the better part of a week in getting the complications disentangled."
"And then what happened?" asked Kenryck, with a grin of anticipation. "I suppose Pender took the first chance to knock the head off his man?"
"Wouldn't he have!" said Colonel Elliott, with something like a sigh of relief at the thought that his peppery little southerner was safe in Liverpool again, and unlikely ever to cause him further trouble. "Why, Kenryck, I honestly thought he'd be back again in jail inside of a week, and for real murder, too. But, luckily, our friend the informer found it convenient to leave town as soon as he saw the turn affairs were taking, and so the gutters didn't run with blood, after all.
"Well, things calmed down, and in time Pender cooled off sufficiently to attend to his business. But he worried the life half out of me by thanking me over and over again, at all sorts of times and in all sorts of places, for what he was pleased to call my 'soldierly magnanimity.' At last, and just as he was beginning to become rather a bore, he took himself off on a hunting trip, somewhere up Canada way, and that was the last I saw of him, for he went back to England by way of Montreal. But after he'd been gone about three weeks I had a reminder of him, in the shape of that pair of horns, which, with his card attached, came to me by express. I had them mounted on the shield, and put that plate upon them, partly because they recall rather an odd experience, and partly to keep myself in mind that the war is over."
"Now, that's quite a story," said Kenryck, as the colonel paused. "I should think, though, that you would keep the horns at home. They are a splendid pair, and the story makes them doubly valuable."
"I had them in my hall for years," said the colonel, "but when we set out to fit up The Battery here, I chipped them in as part of my contribution, for that space of wall, in there between the colors, seemed made on purpose for them. But those antlers are not my only reminder of Pender's gratitude," he continued, taking out his pocket-book and extracting from it a photograph of a bald-headed, pudgy-faced infant, "for here's a picture of a young Liverpool citizen who rejoices in the name of Henry Elliott Pender. He's Pender's third, and he's bound to grow up into a terrible little rebel, for his father is still unreconstructed. Doesn't look very formidable, does he? I'm ready, though, to bet my commission against a corporal's warrant that, one of these days, I'll have a namesake in either Her Majesty's army or navy, for the little rascal comes of fighting stock, and blood will tell."
"Apparently the doctor didn't have a grudge to settle," said Kenryck, handing back the photograph. Then, after disposing of what little beer was left in his pewter, he got upon his feet, saying, "Well, Colonel, I hope I'll have the luck to get up here often, for I want to hear the stories that go with the rest of these odds and ends."