as now close upon thirty years old. I am
free to admit that after my first dinner in his company I had very little
inclination to worry myself about the details of his past, so cheerful and
fascinating did I find his gay companionship. I cannot quite explain the
charm of the man. He had a roving blue eye, a ruddy and glowing complexion,
and a laugh that seemed to kick all gloomy fancies into flinders, and to
carry those who heard it in a helter-skelter gallop of mirth. And then what
stories the fellow could tell! He had the General and me in perpetual
convulsions, and even ALEXANDER, a somewhat awkward and taciturn youth,
much weighed down by the responsibilities of his freshmanhood at Oxford,
was pleased to unbend and smile approvingly at the amazing sallies of the
wizard COBBYN.

One story I remember in particular, though I dare not attempt to repeat it
as COBBYN told it. It was about the wretched adventures of a certain
travelling companion of his on a shooting expedition in Albania. It was a
story that never seemed to cease,--a bad recommendation for most stories, I
admit; but in this case so artfully and with such surprising humour and
force was it told, so vividly did it depict a long series of ludicrous
sufferings culminating in the total loss of the sufferer's clothes and his
involuntary appearance in the full uniform of a Turkish Zaptieh, with other
surprising and endless episodes, that at the last we had in the midst of
our gasps of helpless laughter to implore the narrator to stop for the sake
of our sides and the resounding rafters of the General's house.

At other times the irresistible WILFRID would pose reminiscently as the
gallant protector of outraged virtue, or as the hero of some deathless
story of courage and coolness by which empires had been saved from
disaster. And he was so persuasive, so convincing, that our imaginations,
which would have refused to follow a smaller man on lower flights, soared
obediently after him through an empyrean of impossible romance. Nor did he
stop at this. General TEMPEST was the pattern of old-world punctilio, but
before a week was out he had introduced COBBYN, of whom he knew nothing
except what COBBYN told him, to all the best people in Dansington; nor
shall I ever forget the air with which this glorious rascal took the portly
old Countess of CARDAMUMS down to her second supper at the County Ball. He
rode ALEXANDER'S chestnut, and ALEXANDER never murmured. The General