cred from his depredations. Moreover though there was
a great deal of swagger in his talk it was, oddly enough, rarely swagger
about his military exploits. He had a passion for the chase, he had
followed it in far countries and some of his finest flowers were
reminiscences of lonely danger and escape. The more solitary the scene
the bigger of course the flower. A new acquaintance, with the Colonel,
always received the tribute of a bouquet: that generalisation Lyon very
promptly made. And this extraordinary man had inconsistencies and
unexpected lapses--lapses into flat veracity. Lyon recognised what Sir
David had told him, that his aberrations came in fits or periods--that
he would sometimes keep the truce of God for a month at a time. The
muse breathed upon him at her pleasure; she often left him alone. He
would neglect the finest openings and then set sail in the teeth of the
breeze. As a general thing he affirmed the false rather than denied the
true; yet this proportion was sometimes strikingly reversed. Very often
he joined in the laugh against himself--he admitted that he was trying
it on and that a good many of his anecdotes had an experimental
character. Still he never completely retracted nor retreated--he dived
and came up in another place. Lyon divined that he was capable at
intervals of defending his position with violence, but only when it was
a very bad one. Then he might easily be dangerous--then he would hit out
and become calumnious. Such occasions would test his wife's
equanimity--Lyon would have liked to see her there. In the smoking-room
and elsewhere the company, so far as it was composed of his familiars,
had an hilarious protest always at hand; but among the men who had known
him long his rich tone was an old story, so old that they had ceased to
talk about it, and Lyon did not care, as I have said, to elicit the
judgment of those who might have shared his own surprise.

The oddest thing of all was that neither surprise nor familiarity
prevented the Colonel's being liked; his largest drafts on a sceptical
attention passed for an overflow of life and gaiety--almost of good
looks. He was fond of portraying his bravery and used a very big brush,
and yet he was unmistakably brave. He was a capital rider and shot, in
spite of his fund of anecdote illustrating these accomplishments: in
short he was very nearly as clever and his career had been very nearly
as wonderful as he pretended. His best quality ho