nflated as it had not been
inflated for ten years and more.

Perhaps this inflation of the chest, reviving old recollections,
prompted him to do what next he did. Otherwise I confess I cannot
account for it. He stepped back from the door and looked around the
room, emitting a long breath. Outside the window the dusk was
already descending on the street. Within a glass-fronted cupboard in
the corner, hung his old uniform, sword, epaulettes and cocked hat;
above the mantelpiece a looking-glass.

He stepped to the cupboard, opened it, and took down the time-rotten
regimentals. Slowly, very slowly, he divested himself of his
clothes, and, piece by piece, indued himself in the old finery.

At the breeches he paused; then drew them on hastily over his wooden
leg, and left them unbuttoned at the knees while he thrust his arms
into coat and waistcoat. Prison fare had reduced his waist, and the
garments hung limply about him. But the breeches were worst.
Around his wooden leg the buttons would not meet at all. And what to
do with the gaiter?

Methodically he unstrapped the leg and regarded it. Heavens! how for
these three years past he had hated it! He looked up. From the far
side of the room the bust watched him, still with its fatuous smile.

He rose in a sudden access of passion, gripping the leg, taking aim.
. . . A slight noise in the passage arrested him, and, leaning
against the door-jamb, he peered out. It was the woman with the
evening's milk, and she had set down the jug in the passage.

He closed the door, swayed a moment, and with a spring off his sound
leg, leapt on the still grinning bust and smote at it, crashing it
into pieces.

Mrs. Tiddy, the milkwoman, ran home declaring that, in the act of
delivering the usual two pennyworth at the hospital, she had seen the
ghost of the Major himself, in full regimentals, in the act of
assaulting his own statue; which, sure enough, was found next morning
scattered all over the floor.

The crash of it recalled the Major to his senses. He stared down on
the fragments at his feet. He had burnt his boats now.

As methodically as he had indued them he divested himself of his
regimentals, and so, having slipped into his old clothes again and
strapped on his leg, stumped resolutely forth into the street.

Cai Tamblyn, like every other Trojan, kept a boat of his own; and on
the eve of departing he had placed her at the Major's disposal.
She lay moored