umbers have
their feelings--and their memories.

I sometimes wonder, as I sit in this wheel-chair, with my abominable
legs dangling down helplessly, what Sergeant Marigold thinks of me. I
know what I think of Marigold. I think him the ugliest devil that God
ever created and further marred after creating him. He is a long, bony
creature like a knobbly ram-rod, and his face is about the colour and
shape of a damp, mildewed walnut. To hide a bald head into which a
silver plate has been fixed, he wears a luxuriant curly brown wig, like
those that used to adorn waxen gentlemen in hair-dressing windows. His
is one of those unhappy moustaches that stick out straight and scanty
like a cat's. He has the slit of a letter-box mouth of the Irishman in
caricature, and only half a dozen teeth spaced like a skeleton company.
Nothing will induce him to procure false ones. It is a matter of
principle. Between the wearing of false hair and the wearing of false
teeth he makes a distinction of unfathomable subtlety. He is an
obstinate beast. If he wasn't he would not, with four fingers of his
right hand shot away, have remained with me on that gun. In the same
way, neither tears nor entreaties nor abuse have induced him to wear a
glass eye. On high days and holidays, whenever he desires to look smart
and dashing, he covers the unpleasing orifice with a black shade. In
ordinary workaday life he cares not how much he offends the aesthetic
sense. But the other eye, the sound left eye, is a wonder--the precious
jewel set in the head of the ugly toad. It is large, of ultra-marine
blue, steady, fearless, humorous, tender--everything heroic and
beautiful and romantic you can imagine about eyes. Let him clap a hand
over that eye and you will hold him the most dreadful ogre that ever
escaped out of a fairy tale. Let him clap a hand over the other eye and
look full at you out of the good one and you will think him the
Knightliest man that ever was--and in my poor opinion, you would not be
far wrong.

So, out of this nightmare of a face, the one beautiful eye of Sergeant
Marigold was bent on me, as he delivered his message.

I thrust back my chair from the writing-table.

"Is Sir Anthony ill?"

"He rode by the gate an hour ago looking as well as either you or me,
sir."

"That's not very reassuring," said I.

Marigold did not take up the argument. "They've sent the car for you,
sir."

"In that case," said I, "I'll start immediately."

Mar