I killed a man in a duel, and myself was wounded so badly that I thought I too was then going to die, though while I was on the ground where I’d fallen, beside the pistol that I’d dropped when the slug that had been discharged from the other man’s weapon had slammed into my chest, the doctor who’d been summoned, by one of our party, to this clearing in the forest, that he might witness the encounter and aid one of us or both of us, once our purpose had been accomplished, said, as he knelt above me with an instrument he’d taken from his bag, and that he’d already used on my rival, though to no avail, “He might yet live, the round has missed his heart.”