Mr. Schnackenberger shrugged his shoulders.
'Nay, my brother, no jesting (if you please) on such serious occasions: I demand my article.'
'What, if the article have vanished?'
'Vanished!' said Mr. Fabian; 'why then we must fight, until it comes back again.—Sir, my brother, you have acted nefariously enough in absconding with goods that you had sold: would you proceed to yet greater depths in nefariousness, by now withholding from me my own article?'
So saying, Mr. Fabian paid down the purchase money in hard gold upon the table. 'Come, now, be easy,' said Mr. Schnackenberger, 'and hear me.'
'Be easy, do you say? That will I not: but hear I will, and with all my heart, provided it be nothing unhearable—nor anything in question of my right to the article: else, you know, come knocks.' 'Knocks!' said Jeremiah: 'and since when, I should be glad to know, has the Schnackenberger been in the habit of taking knocks without knocking again, and paying a pretty large per centage?'
'Ah! very likely. That's your concern. As to me, I speak only for myself and for my article.' Hereupon Mr. Schnackenberger made him acquainted with the circumstances, which were so unpalatable to the purchaser of 'the article,' that he challenged Mr. Schnackenberger to single combat there and then.
'Come,' said Mr. Fabian; 'but first put up the purchase money: for I, at least, will practise nothing that is nefarious.'
Mr. Schnackenberger did so; redeemed his sword from Mrs. Sweetbread by settling her bill; buckled it on; and attended Mr. Fabian to the neighbouring forest.
Being arrived at a spot suitable to their purpose, and their swords drawn, Mr. Schnackenberger said—'Upon my word it's a shocking thing that we must fight upon this argument: not but it's just what I have long expected. Junonian quarrels I have had, in my time, 747; and a Junonian duel is nothing more than I have foreseen for this last week. Yet, after all, brother, I give you my honour that the brute is not worth a duel: for, fools as we have been in our rivalship about her, between ourselves she is a mere agent of the fiend, and minister of perdition, to him who is so unhappy as to call her his.'