rk in the wind of the Serra. A glass--but one--of that Port you
tasted yesterday. I say but a glass, yet I hope you will do honour to
the bottle. But a glass at least, at least!" He implored it almost with
tears. Mr. Butler had reached that state of delicious torpor in which
to take the road is the last agony; but duty was duty, and Sir Robert
Craufurd had the fiend's own temper. Torn thus between consciousness of
duty and the weakness of the flesh, he looked at O'Rourke. O'Rourke,
a cherubic fellow, who had for his years a very pretty taste in wine,
returned the glance with a moist eye, and licked his lips.

"In your place I should let myself be tempted," says he. "It's an
elegant wine, and ten minutes more or less is no great matter."

The lieutenant discovered a middle way which permitted him to take a
prompt decision creditable to his military instincts, but revealing a
disgraceful though quite characteristic selfishness.

"Very well," he said. "Leave Sergeant Flanagan and ten men to wait for
me, O'Rourke, and do you set out at once with the rest of the troop. And
take the cattle with you. I shall overtake you before you have gone very
far."

O'Rourke's crestfallen air stirred the sympathetic Souza's pity.

"But, Captain," he besought, "will you not allow the lieutenant--"

Mr. Butler cut him short. "Duty," said he sententiously, "is duty. Be
off, O'Rourke."

And O'Rourke, clicking his heels viciously, saluted and departed.

Came presently the bottles in a basket--not one, as Souza had said, but
three; and when the first was done Butler reflected that since O'Rourke
and the cattle were already well upon the road there need no longer be
any hurry about his own departure. A herd of bullocks does not travel
very quickly, and even with a few hours' start in a forty-mile journey
is easily over-taken by a troop of horse travelling without encumbrance.

You understand, then, how easily our lieutenant yielded himself to
the luxurious circumstances, and disposed himself to savour the second
bottle of that nectar distilled from the very sunshine of the Douro--the
phrase is his own. The steward produced a box of very choice cigars, and
although the lieutenant was not an habitual smoker, he permitted himself
on this exceptional occasion to be further tempted. Stretched in a deep
chair beside the roaring fire of pine logs, he sipped and smoked and
drowsed away the greater par of that wintry afternoon. Soon the third
bot