rhaps the notion of anything
like guidance offended him; perhaps it was the phrase, "bear-leadership,"
and the half-threat of betraying him, has done the mischief.' Now the
gallant soldier was a slow thinker; it took him a deal of time to arrange
the details of any matter in his mind, and when he tried to muster his
ideas there were many which would not answer the call, and of those
which came, there were not a few which seemed to present themselves in a
refractory and unwilling spirit, so that he had almost to suppress a mutiny
before he proceeded to his inspection.

Nor did the strong cheroots, which he smoked to clear his faculties and
develop his mental resources, always contribute to this end, though their
soothing influence certainly helped to make him more satisfied with his
judgments.

'Now, look here, Walpole,' said he, determining that he would save himself
all unnecessary labour of thought by throwing the burden of the case on the
respondent--'Look here; take a calm view of this thing, and see if it's
quite wise in you to go back into trammels it cost you some trouble to
escape from. You call it spooning, but you won't deny you went very far
with that young woman--farther, I suspect, than you've told me yet. Eh! is
that true or not?'

He waited a reasonable time for a reply, but none coming, he went on--'I
don't want a forced confidence. You may say it's no business of mine, and
there I agree with you, and probably if you put _me_ to the question in
the same fashion, I'd give you a very short answer. Remember one thing,
however, old fellow--I've seen a precious deal more of life and the world
than you have! From sixteen years of age, when _you_ were hammering away at
Greek verbs and some such balderdash at Oxford, I was up at Rangoon with
the very fastest set of men--ay, of women too--I ever lived with in all my
life. Half of our fellows were killed off by it. Of course people will say
climate, climate! but if I were to give you the history of one day--just
twenty-four hours of our life up there--you'd say that the wonder is
there's any one alive to tell it.'

He turned around at this, to enjoy the expression of horror and surprise
he hoped to have called up, and perceived for the first time that he was
alone. He rang the bell, and asked the waiter where the other gentleman
had gone, and learned that he had ordered a car, and set out for Kilgobbin
Castle more than half an hour before.

'All right,' said