ridden to the bottom of a pass and back again!

"Heavens! Doctor," exclaimed the sardonic Quick, after taking note of
these demonstrations, "Heavens! what a hero I feel myself to be. And
to think that when I got back from the war with them Boers, after being
left for dead on Spion Kop with a bullet through my lung and mentioned
in a dispatch--yes, I, Sergeant Quick, mentioned in a dispatch by the
biggest ass of a general as ever I clapped eyes on, for a job that
I won't detail, no one in my native village ever took no note of
me, although I had written to the parish clerk, who happens to be my
brother-in-law, and told him the train I was coming by. I tell you,
Doctor, no one so much as stood me a pint of beer, let alone wine," and
he pointed to a lady who was proffering that beverage to some one whom
she admired.

"And as for chucking their arms round my neck and kissing me," and
he indicated another episode, "all my old mother said--she was alive
then--was that she 'hoped I'd done fooling about furrin' parts as I
called soldiering, and come home to live respectable, better late than
never.' Well, Doctor, circumstances alter cases, or blood and climate
do, which is the same thing, and I didn't miss what I never expected,
why should I when others like the Captain there, who had done so much
more, fared worse? But, Lord! these Abati are a sickening lot, and I
wish we were clear of them. Old Barung's the boy for me."

Passing down the main street of this charming town of Mur, accompanied
by these joyous demonstrators, we came at last to its central square, a
large, open space where, in the moist and genial climate, for the high
surrounding mountains attracted plentiful showers of rain, trees and
flowers grew luxuriantly. At the head of this square stood a long,
low building with white-washed walls and gilded domes, backed by the
towering cliff, but at a little distance from it, and surrounded by
double walls with a moat of water between them, dug for purposes of
defence.

This was the palace, which on my previous visit I had only entered once
or twice when I was received by the Child of Kings in formal audience.
Round the rest of this square, each placed in its own garden, were the
houses of the great nobles and officials, and at its western end, among
other public buildings, a synagogue or temple which looked like a model
of that built by Solomon in Jerusalem, from the description of which it
had indeed been copied, t