The man was Captain Higgins. When Goldsmith had failed to return to the room in the Mitre where he had left his sword, his friends became uneasy regarding him, and Higgins, suspecting his purpose in leaving the tavern, had hastened to Evans's, hoping to be in time to prevent the assault which he felt certain Goldsmith intended to commit upon the person of Kenrick.
He ordered the coachman to drive to the Temple, and took advantage of the occasion to lecture the excited man upon the impropriety of his conduct. A lecture on the disgrace attached to a public fight, when delivered in a broad Irish brogue, can rarely be effective, and Captain Higgins's counsel of peace only called for Goldsmith's ridicule.
"Don't tell me what I ought to have done or what I ought to have abstained from doing," cried the still breathless man. "I did what my manhood prompted me to do, and that is just what you would have done yourself, my friend. God knows I didn't mean to harm Evans--it was that reptile Kenrick whom I meant to flail; but when Evans undertook to shelter him, what was left to me, I ask you, sir?"
"You were a fool, Oliver," said his countryman; "you made a great mistake. Can't you see that you should never go about such things single-handed? You should have brought with you a full-sized friend who would not hesitate to use his fists in the interests of fair play. Why the devil, sir, didn't you give me a hint of what was on your mind when you left the tavern?"
"Because I didn't know myself what was on my mind," replied Goldsmith. "And, besides," he added, "I'm not the man to carry bruisers about with me to engage in my quarrels. I don't regret what I have done to-day. I have taught the reptiles a lesson, even though I have to pay for it. Kenrick won't attack me again so long as I am alive."
He was right. It was when he was lying in his coffin, yet unburied, that Kenrick made his next attack upon him in that scurrility of phrase of which he was a master.
When this curious exponent of the advantages of peace had left him at Brick Court, and his few incidental bruises were attended to by John Eyles, poor Oliver's despondency returned to him. He did not feel very like one who has got the better of another in a quarrel, though he knew that he had done all that he said he had done: he had taught his enemies a lesson.