"Come, come! no palaver," returned Sam, in a loud and boisterous
tone (to do him justice, he had never been taught any other);
"down on your marrow-bones at once, or here goes for your
gizzard!" and he drew his sword with a flourish.

So this was the rough diamond--the epitome of common sense! Why,
he was a half-witted, impertinent, overbearing booby, and his
author longed to get him across his knee, and correct him in the
good old way. But meantime the point of the young warrior's
sword was getting unpleasantly near the left breast-pocket of
the author's dressing gown (which he wore at the time), and the
latter happened to recollect, with a nervous thrill, that this
was the sword which mortally wounded the traitor lover (for whom
Sam evidently mistook him) during the stirring combat so vividly
described in the twenty-second chapter. Could he but have
foreseen the future, what a different ending that engagement
should have had! But again it was too late, and the author sprang
behind the big easy chair with astonishing agility, and from that
vantage ground endeavored to bring on a parley.

Yet how could he argue and expostulate against himself? How
arraign Sam of harboring murderous designs which he had himself
implanted in his bosom? How, indeed, expect him to comprehend
conversation so entirely foreign to his experience? It was an
awkward dilemma.

It was Sam who took it by the horns. Somebody, he felt, must be
mortally wounded; and finding himself defrauded of one subject,
he took up with the next he encountered, which chanced to be none