her entering or quitting the dwelling. I was alone with
the dead for upward of an hour--no enviable vigil--when it pleased her
unfeeling and gossiping retainer to return and release me. Believe it,
say you? I do believe it--and most firmly--as fact and not fancy."

"And what say you, Major?" pursued the questioner, turning to his
military companion.

"I believe it also, and the more readily from recollecting what once
occurred to myself. Soon after my awkward hit at Vittoria, where I
received a bullet, which I carry about with me to this hour, I was
ordered home on sick leave. Landing at Falmouth from a filthy transport,
feeble, feverish, solitary and wretched, I was recognized by a former
intimate, who followed me to my inn and insisted upon taking me down with
him into ----shire. Rest and country air, he was sure, would recruit me.
In vain I explained the wretched cripple I was. In vain I submitted that
the 'hospital mates,' one and all, entertained the worst opinion of my
injury. He would take no denial. It was a case, he contended, not for the
knife or the doctor; but for beef-steaks and Barclay's stout. And this
opinion he would make good, in my instance, against the whole hospital
staff at home and abroad. Too weak to contest the point, I gave in; and
promised that, if living, that day week should find me at ---- House. The
first part of my journey I made out with comparatively little suffering.
The latter part, where I was obliged to have recourse to a hack chaise,
neither wind nor weather tight--ill hung, and badly driven, was torture.
At length, unable to endure longer agony, I got out; and bidding the
postboy drive with my luggage to ---- House, limped along across the
fields under the pilotage of an old laborer--it was a work of time--to my
destination.

"My gray-haired guide, who commiserated my situation, was very
inquisitive about 'the war and Lord Wellington;' asked whether _all_ the
Spaniards lived on 'mules' flesh fried with onions,' as he 'had been told
for truth;' inquired what 'our side' thought of 'Boney's covenant with
the devil,' a covenant, (according to his reading,) to this effect, that
'the devil had given Boney _a lease of luck_ for threescore and three
years, and that when it was up he was to be shot by a Spanish maiden with
a silver bullet.' Many folks, he said, believed all this to be true and
_sartain_; but that he, for his part, 'did not _hold_ with it: what did I
think?' But however t