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“Well, gentlemen, let’s to business. We have but a few minutes of daylight left. I presume you are ready?”

Both gentlemen bowed, and the Major proceeded to explain that he had loaded both pistols himself with precisely similar charges, and that they were identical in trigger, sight, drift, and weight, and had been tested on a number of occasions, when they had proved to be “excellent weapons and remarkably accurate in their fire.” The young men bowed silently; but when he turned suddenly and called “George Washington,” that individual nearly jumped out of his coat. The Major ordered him to measure ten paces, which, after first giving notice that he “didn’t ripre-sent nobody,” he proceeded to do, taking a dozen or more gigantic strides, and hastily retired again behind the safe bulwark of Jeff’s back. As he stood there in his shrunken condition, he about as much resembled the pompous and arrogant duellist of a half-hour previous as a wet and bedraggled turkey does the strutting, gobbling cock of the flock. The Major, with an objurgation at him for stepping “as if he had on seven league boots,” stepped off the distance himself, explaining to Lawrence that ten paces was about the best distance, as it was sufficiently distant to “avoid the unpleasantness of letting a gentleman feel that he was within touching distance,” and yet “near enough to avoid useless mutilation.”

Taking out a coin, he announced that he would toss up for the choice of position, or rather would make a “disinterested person” do so, and, holding out his hand, he called George Washington to toss it up. There was no response until the Major shouted, “George Washington, where are you–you rascal!”

“Heah me, suh,” said George Washington, in a quavering voice, rising from the ground, where he had thrown himself to avoid any stray bullets, and coming slowly forward, with a pitiful, “Please, suh, don’ p’int dat thing dis away.”

The Major gave him the coin, with an order to toss it up, in a tone so sharp that it made him jump; and he began to turn it over nervously in his hand, which was raised a little above his shoulder. In his manipulation it slipped out of his hand and disappeared. George Washington in a dazed way looked in his hand, and then on the ground. “Hi! whar’ hit?” he muttered, getting down on his knees and searching in the grass. “Dis heah place is evil-sperited.”

The Major called to him to hurry up, but he was too intent on solving the problem of the mysterious disappearance of the quarter.

“I ain’ nuver like dis graveyard bein’ right heah,” he murmured. “Marse Nat, don’ you have no mo’ to do wid dis thing.”

The Major’s patience was giving out. “George Washington, you rascal!” he shouted, “do you think I can wait all night for you to pull up all the grass in the garden? Take the quarter out of your pocket, sir!”

“‘Tain’ in my pocket, suh,” quavered George Washington, feeling there instinctively, however, when the coin slipped down his sleeve into his hand again. This was too much for him. “Hi! befo’ de king,” he exclaimed, “how it git in my pocket? Oh, Marster! de devil is ’bout heah, sho’! Marse Nat, you fling it up, suh. I ain’ nuttin but a po’ sinful nigger. Oh, Lordy!” And handing over the quarter tremulously, George Washington flung himself flat on the ground and, as a sort of religious incantation, began to chant in a wild, quavering tone the funeral hymn:

“Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound.”

The Major tossed up and posted the duellists, and with much solemnity handed them the pistols, which both the two young men received quietly. They were pale, but perfectly steady. The Major then asked them, “Gentlemen, are you ready?” whilst at the omnious sound George Washington’s voice in tremulous falsetto, struck in,

“Ye-ee–so-ons off meenn co-ome view-ew the-ee groun’,
Wher-ere you-ou m–uss’ shor-ort-ly lie.”