I received your letter about the rascally court-martial; but
perhaps you have not heard that the little scoundrel is dead. Yes,
Peter; he brought your letter out in his own ship, and that was his
death-warrant. I met him at a private party. He brought up your name--
I allowed him to abuse you, and then told him he was a liar and a
scoundrel; upon which he challenged me, very much against his will;
but the affront was so public, that he couldn't help himself. Upon
which I shot him, with all the good-will in the world, and could he
have jumped up again twenty times, like Jack-in-the-Box, I would have
shot him every time. The dirty scoundrel! but there's an end of him.
Nobody pitied him, for every one hated him; and the admiral only
looked grave, and then was very much obliged to me for giving him a
vacancy for his nephew. By-the-bye, from some unknown hand, but I
presume from the officers of his ship, I received a packet of
correspondence between him and your worthy uncle, which is about as
elegant a piece of rascality as ever was carried on between two
scoundrels; but that's not all, Peter. I've got a young woman for you
who will make your heart glad--not Mademoiselle Celeste, for I don't
know where she is--but the wet-nurse who went out to India. Her
husband was sent home as an invalid, and she was allowed her passage
home with him in my frigate. Finding that he belonged to the regiment,
I talked to him about one O'Sullivan, who married in Ireland, and
mentioned the girl's name, and when he discovered that he was a
countryman of mine he told me that his real name was O'Sullivan, sure
enough, but that he had always served as O'Connell, and that his wife
on board was the young woman in question.
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