ed
swiftly into the room, set his silk hat with a clap on the table, and
said, "Good evening, gentlemen," with a stress on the last syllable that
somehow marked him out as a martinet, military, literary and social.
He had a large head streaked with black and grey, and an abrupt black
moustache, which gave him a look of fierceness which was contradicted by
his sad sea-blue eyes.

Basil immediately said to me, "Let us come into the next room, Gully,"
and was moving towards the door, but the stranger said:

"Not at all. Friends remain. Assistance possibly."

The moment I heard him speak I remembered who he was, a certain Major
Brown I had met years before in Basil's society. I had forgotten
altogether the black dandified figure and the large solemn head, but I
remembered the peculiar speech, which consisted of only saying about a
quarter of each sentence, and that sharply, like the crack of a gun. I
do not know, it may have come from giving orders to troops.

Major Brown was a V.C., and an able and distinguished soldier, but he
was anything but a warlike person. Like many among the iron men who
recovered British India, he was a man with the natural beliefs and
tastes of an old maid. In his dress he was dapper and yet demure; in his
habits he was precise to the point of the exact adjustment of a tea-cup.
One enthusiasm he had, which was of the nature of a religion--the
cultivation of pansies. And when he talked about his collection, his
blue eyes glittered like a child's at a new toy, the eyes that had
remained untroubled when the troops were roaring victory round Roberts
at Candahar.

"Well, Major," said Rupert Grant, with a lordly heartiness, flinging
himself into a chair, "what is the matter with you?"

"Yellow pansies. Coal-cellar. P. G. Northover," said the Major, with
righteous indignation.

We glanced at each other with inquisitiveness. Basil, who had his eyes
shut in his abstracted way, said simply:

"I beg your pardon."

"Fact is. Street, you know, man, pansies. On wall. Death to me.
Something. Preposterous."

We shook our heads gently. Bit by bit, and mainly by the seemingly
sleepy assistance of Basil Grant, we pieced together the Major's
fragmentary, but excited narration. It would be infamous to submit the
reader to what we endured; therefore I will tell the story of Major
Brown in my own words. But the reader must imagine the scene. The eyes
of Basil closed as in a trance, after his habit, and the