Before the close of the day a gentleman called on me from O'Halloran, whom I referred to Jack, and these two made arrangements for the duel. It was to take place in a certain locality, which I do not intend to mention, and which was no matter how many miles out of town.
We left at an early hour, and the doctor accompanied us. Jack had sufficient foresight to fill the sleigh with all the refreshments that might be needed on such an occasion. We drove to O'Halloran's house, where we found his sleigh waiting, with himself and a friend all ready to start. They led the way, and we followed.
It was a nasty time, the roads were terrible. They were neither one thing nor the other. There was nothing but a general mixture of ice heaps, slush, thawing snowdrifts, bare ground, and soft mud. Over this our progress was extremely slow. Added to this, the weather was abominable. It was warm, soft, slimy, and muggy. The atmosphere had changed into a universal drizzle, and was close and oppressive. At first O'Halloran's face was often turned back to hail us with some jovial remark, to which we responded in a similar manner; but after a time silence settled on the party, and the closeness, and the damp, and the slow progress, reduced us one and all to a general state of sulkiness.
At length we came to a little settlement consisting of a half-dozen houses, one of which bore a sign on which we read the words Hôtel de France. We kept on without stopping, and O'Halloran soon turned to the right, into a narrow track which went into the woods. In about half an hour we reached our destination. The sleighs drew up, and their occupants prepared for business.
It was a small cleared space in the middle of the woods. The forest-trees arose all around, dim, gloomy, and dripping. The ground was dotted with decayed stumps, and covered with snow in a state of semi-liquefaction. Beneath all was wet; around all was wet; and above all was wet. The place with its surroundings was certainly the most dismal that I had ever seen, and the dank, dark, and dripping trees threw an additional gloom about it.
We had left Quebec before seven. It was after twelve when we reached this place.
"Well, me boy," said O'Halloran to me, with a gentle smile, "it's an onsaisonable toime of year for a jool, but it can't be helped—an' it's a moighty uncomfortable pleece, so it is."
"We might have had it out in the road in a quiet way," said I, "without the trouble of coming here."
"The road!" exclaimed O'Halloran. "Be the powers, I'd have been deloighted to have had it in me oun parrulor. But what can we do? Sure it's the barbarous legisleetin of this counthry, that throis to stoifle and raypriss the sintimints of honor, and the code of chivalry. Sure it's a bad pleece intoirely. But you ought to see it in the summer. It's the most sayquisthered localeetee that ye could wish to see."
Saying this, O'Halloran turned to his friend and then to us.