“If I can, be sure that I will.”
“You may perhaps hesitate, when you hear what it is. I want you to be my second in a duel.”
“In a duel!” I repeated, greatly astonished, and not over-pleased at the idea of being mixed up in some barrack-room quarrel. “In a duel! and with whom?”
“With an officer of my regiment.”
“Of your own rank, I presume?” said I, a little surprised at the sort of assumption by which he called a sergeant an officer, without the usual prefix of “non-commissioned.”
“In that case I need not have troubled you,” he replied; “I could have found a dozen seconds. But my antagonist is a commissioned officer, a lieutenant of the same regiment with myself, although in a different squadron.”
“The devil he is!” I exclaimed. “That becomes cause for court-martial.”
“Undoubtedly,” replied Oakley, “for me, but no harm can accrue to you. I am your countryman; I come to you in plain clothes and ask you to be my second in a duel. You consent; we go on the ground and meet another man, apparently a civilian, of whose military quality or grade you, are in no way supposed cognisant. Duels occur daily in France, as you know, and no notice is taken of them, even when fatal. I assure you there is no danger for you.”
“I was not thinking of myself. But if you escape unhurt from the encounter, you will be shot for attempting the life of your superior.”
Oakley shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “I know that, but must take my chance;” but made no other reply to my remark.