Why shouldn't we adjourn
to his rooms? He had there materials for a dish of his own invention for
which he was famous all along the line of the Royal Cavalry outposts, and
he would cook it for us. There were also a few bottles of some white
wine, quite possible, which we could drink out of Venetian cut-glass
goblets. A _bivouac_ feast, in fact. And he wouldn't turn us out in the
small hours. Not he. He couldn't sleep.

Need I say I was fascinated by the idea? Well, yes. But somehow I
hesitated and looked towards Mills, so much my senior. He got up without
a word. This was decisive; for no obscure premonition, and of something
indefinite at that, could stand against the example of his tranquil
personality.

CHAPTER II

The street in which Mr. Blunt lived presented itself to our eyes, narrow,
silent, empty, and dark, but with enough gas-lamps in it to disclose its
most striking feature: a quantity of flag-poles sticking out above many
of its closed portals. It was the street of Consuls and I remarked to
Mr. Blunt that coming out in the morning he could survey the flags of all
nations almost--except his own. (The U. S. consulate was on the other
side of the town.) He mumbled through his teeth that he took good care
to keep clear of his own consulate.

"Are you afraid of the consul's dog?" I asked jocularly. The consul's
dog weighed about a pound and a half and was known to the whole town as
exhibited on the consular fore-arm in all places, at all hours, but
mainly at the hour of the fashionable promenade on the Prado.

But I felt my jest misplaced when Mills growled low in my ear: "They are
all Yankees there."

I murmured a confused "Of course."

Books are nothing. I discovered that I had never been aware before that
the Civil War in America was not printed matter but a fact only about ten
years old. Of course. He was a South Carolinian gentleman. I was a
little ashamed of my want of tact. Meantime, looking like the
conventional conception of a fashionable reveller, with his opera-hat
pushed off his forehead, Captain Blunt was having some slight difficulty
with his latch-key; for the house before which we had stopped was not one
of those many-storied houses that made up the greater part of the street.
It had only one row of windows above the ground floor. Dead walls
abutting on to it indicated that it had a garden. Its dark front
presented no marked architectural character, and in the f