either some mischief brewing, or another bottle
of wine to be had, so he stepped back into the
tavern. There he found a cluster of pale and
horrified faces, sobered now, watching poor
Gower, who was bleeding, and leaning half fainting
over a chair. There was not twelve hours'
life in him. In another chair sat Mr. Blunt,
moaning, and also apparently dying.

Mr. Shaw, a surgeon then in the house, came
and dressed the wounds of both men. Mr.
Blunt proved to be dangerously hurt. Mr.
Gower was languishing; his intestines
appeared at the wound. A second rupture was
also suspected. The major with the bloodshot
eyes and the evil mouth stood by in his frouzy
campaigning wig, his cruel hand on the
tarnished hilt of his sword, swearing that the first
glass had been flung by Mr. Gower, and that
he (the major) had not only received the first
affront, but had also been first drawn upon.

When the two wounded men had been sent
home in sedan-chairs, Mr. Rich and Mr.
Hawkins came out of the tavern with Major Oneby,
slow pacing and melancholy. It had been an
evil night, and the moon was rising over the
roofs of a dull blood colour. Mr. Rich said
to the major as they walked together:

"I am afraid you have killed Mr. Gower."

To which the major replied confidently:

"No, I might have done it if I would, but I
have only frightened him. Suppose I had
killed him? I know what to do in these affairs;
for if I had killed him to-night in the heat of
passion, I should have had the law on my side;
but if I had done it at any other time it would
have looked like a set meeting and not a
rencontre."

The major was learned in duels, but he had
forgotten the law for once. The presumption
of law was, that if a considerable interval elapsed
between a provocation and a fight, the renewal
of the quarrel proved malice, and made the
aggressor a murderer.

Mr. Rich knew this, and remembered that the
major first began the quarrel in his vexation
at the friends refusing to play at hazard after
the second main; so he simply said:

"I advise you to make off, for fear of the
worst."

The frightened waiter, when the dangerous
company left the Castle Tavern, went peering
about the room with a light. There were
several small pools of blood, especially close
to the wainscot behind the flap of the great
oval table where Rich had found Gower's sword
stained with blood for five inches from the point.

The next evening a mysterious letter was
brought to Mr. Burdet, a surgeon near Red
Lion-square, by a man in a coach, desiring him
to come and see Major Oneby at the house of a
Mr. Gardiner in Dean-street, where he was
concealing himself, having been wounded in a
rencontre. The major had one wound an inch
and a half long below his knee and one on his
flank; two of his fingers were cut in the first
joints; there were several holes and cuts in his
clothes; but there was an unreal air about the
wounds which made the surgeon feel suspicious,
for they were none of them a quarter of an inch
deep, and the thrust below the knee was only a
graze.

That same day Mr. Gower slowly sank and
died. Mr. Rich, bending over him, asked him,
just before the change for death came on, "if
he had received his wound fairly?" He
answered faintly, with great effort:

"I think I did—but—I don't know—what
might have happened—if you—had not—come
in." It is probable that Major Oneby, having
disarmed the young fellow, would have stabbed
him mercilessly till he had killed him on the spot.

The major was tried at the Old Bailey in
March of the same year. He pleaded that he
had not first called for the box and dice, and
that Mr. Gower threw the glass and drew first;
but the court decided that it was clear the
prisoner gave the first provocation, and it was
not denied that he killed the deceased. If
there had been no reconciliation from the time
the bottle was thrown to the time the last
thrust was made, it was murder.

The jury agreed upon a special verdict. The
counsel on both sides then drew up their points
of the evidence for the consideration of the
judges. The major, who had entertained great
hopes of getting off for "manslaughter," rather
struck silent by this delay, was remanded
to Newgate, where he spent a whole year
comfortably, without irons, and in the best room
of the prison. Finding that no steps had been
taken by the prosecutor to bring on the case,
he now considered that the enemy had no hopes,
and moved to have the case tried in the King's
Bench. The case was tried in February, 1726.
Lord Chief Justice Raymond, however,
adjourned the case.

On his way back to Newgate the gallant
officer was boisterous, jovial, hopeful, and
exulting. He stopped and dined at the King's
Arms Tavern in the Strand. He was sure,
he boasted, that the special verdict would be
in his favour, and he should have nothing
to do but to return to the army and repair
the loss of the trial by plundering the enemy.
Men of this kind always trade on their former
positions in their days of innocence.

On the 6th of May, 1727, the judges met at
Serjeants Inn, if possible to end the case.
Meanwhile his not very honourable antecedents
had been found out and considered. John
Oneby, aged fifty-three, was the son of a
respectable and successful lawyer at Barwell, in
Leicestershire. The boy had been well
educated, and served his clerkship with a man
eminent in the profession; but young Oneby
was proud and ambitious; he aimed at
higher things than clerkships, and chafed at
the restrictions of the office. Sir Nathan
Wright, the lord-keeper, being a near
relation of his mother, application was made to him
to push the fortunes of his young kinsman, but
all he could or would give him was the humble
place of a train-bearer. Oneby brooked this for
some time, hoping for a better prize; but