back to the
door through which he had come and immediately facing the prosecutor.
He retained his hat, but placed his riding-crop on the table before
him; and the only thing he would accept was an officer's notes of the
proceedings as far as they had gone, which that officer himself was
prompt to offer. With a repeated injunction to the court to proceed,
Lord Wellington became instantly absorbed in the study of these notes.

Colonel Grant, standing very straight and stiff in the originally red
coat which exposure to many weathers had faded to an autumnal brown,
continued and concluded his statement of what he had seen and heard on
the night of the 28th of May in the garden at Monsanto.

The judge-advocate now invited him to turn his memory back to the
luncheon-party at Sir Terence's on the 27th, and to tell the court
of the altercation that had passed on that occasion between Captain
Tremayne and Count Samoval.

"The conversation at table," he replied, "turned, as was perhaps quite
natural, upon the recently published general order prohibiting duelling
and making it a capital offence for officers in his Majesty's service
in the Peninsula. Count Samoval stigmatised the order as a degrading
and arbitrary one, and spoke in defence of single combat as the only
honourable method of settling differences between gentlemen. Captain
Tremayne dissented rather sharply, and appeared to resent the term
'degrading' applied by the Count to the enactment. Words followed, and
then some one--Lady O'Moy, I think, and as I imagine with intent
to soothe the feelings of Count Samoval, which appeared to be
ruffled--appealed to his vanity by mentioning the fact that he was
himself a famous swordsman. To this Captain Tremayne's observation was
a rather unfortunate one, although I must confess that I was fully in
sympathy with it at the time. He said, as nearly as I remember, that at
the moment Portugal was in urgent need of famous swords to defend her
from invasion and not to increase the disorders at home."

Lord Wellington looked up from the notes and thoughtfully stroked his
high-bridged nose. His stern, handsome face was coldly impassive, his
fine eyes resting upon the prisoner, but his attention all to what
Colonel Grant was saying.

"It was a remark of which Samoval betrayed the bitterest resentment.
He demanded of Captain Tremayne that he should be more precise, and
Tremayne replied that, whilst he had spoken generally, Samoval was