was an indescribable something
about Mr. Fortescue which would have made it difficult to contradict him,
even had I been disposed to take so ungrateful and ungracious a part.

At length, after a weary interval of inaction and pain, came a time when I
could get up and move about without discomfort, and one fine frosty day,
which seemed the brightest of my life, Geist and Ramon helped me
down-stairs and led me into a pretty little morning-room, opening into one
of the conservatories, where the plants and flowers had been so arranged
as to look like a sort of tropical forest, in the midst of which was an
aviary filled with parrots, cockatoos, and other birds of brilliant
plumage.

Geist brought me an easy-chair, Ramon a box of cigarettes and the "Times,"
and I was just settling down to a comfortable read and smoke, when Mr.
Fortescue entered from the conservatory. He wore a Norfolk jacket and a
broad-brimmed hat, and his step was so elastic, and his bearing so
upright, and he seemed so strong and vigorous withal, that I began to
think that in estimating his age at sixty I had made a mistake. He looked
more like fifty or fifty-five.

"I am glad to see you down-stairs," he said, helping himself to a
cigarette. "How do you feel?"

"Very much better, thank you, and to-morrow or the next day I must
really--"

"No, no, I cannot let you go yet. I shall keep you, at any rate, a few
days longer. And while this frost lasts you can do no hunting. How is the
shoulder?"

"Better. In a fortnight or so I shall be able to dispense with the sling,
but my ankle is the worst. The contusion was very severe. I fear that I
shall feel the effects of it for a long time."

"That is very likely, I think. I would any time rather have a clean flesh
wound than a severe contusion. I have had experience of both. At Salamanca
my shoulder was laid open with a sabre-stroke at the very moment my horse
was shot under me; and my leg, which was terribly bruised in the fall, was
much longer in getting better than my shoulder."

"At Salamanca! You surely don't mean the battle of Salamanca?"

"Yes, the battle of Salamanca."

"But, God bless me, that is ages ago! At the beginning of the
century--1810 or 1812, or something like that."

"The battle of Salamanca was fought on the 21st of July, 1812," said my
host, with a matter-of-fact air.

"But--why--how?" I stammered, staring at him in supreme surprise. "That is
sixty years since, and you don't loo