After this I protested no more, for there was an indescribable something about Mr. Fortescue which would have made it difficult to contradict him, even had I been disposed to take so ungrateful and ungracious a part.

At length, after a weary interval of inaction and pain, came a time when I could get up and move about without discomfort, and one fine frosty day, which seemed the brightest of my life, Geist and Ramon helped me down-stairs and led me into a pretty little morning-room, opening into one of the conservatories, where the plants and flowers had been so arranged as to look like a sort of tropical forest, in the midst of which was an aviary filled with parrots, cockatoos, and other birds of brilliant plumage.

Geist brought me an easy-chair, Ramon a box of cigarettes and the “Times,” and I was just settling down to a comfortable read and smoke, when Mr. Fortescue entered from the conservatory.  He wore a Norfolk jacket and a broad-brimmed hat, and his step was so elastic, and his bearing so upright, and he seemed so strong and vigorous withal, that I began to think that in estimating his age at sixty I had made a mistake.  He looked more like fifty or fifty-five.

“I am glad to see you down-stairs,” he said, helping himself to a cigarette.  “How do you feel?”

“Very much better, thank you, and to-morrow or the next day I must really—­”

“No, no, I cannot let you go yet.  I shall keep you, at any rate, a few days longer.  And while this frost lasts you can do no hunting.  How is the shoulder?”

“Better.  In a fortnight or so I shall be able to dispense with the sling, but my ankle is the worst.  The contusion was very severe.  I fear that I shall feel the effects of it for a long time.”

“That is very likely, I think.  I would any time rather have a clean flesh wound than a severe contusion.  I have had experience of both.  At Salamanca my shoulder was laid open with a sabre-stroke at the very moment my horse was shot under me; and my leg, which was terribly bruised in the fall, was much longer in getting better than my shoulder.”

“At Salamanca!  You surely don’t mean the battle of Salamanca?”

“Yes, the battle of Salamanca.”

“But, God bless me, that is ages ago!  At the beginning of the century—­1810 or 1812, or something like that.”

“The battle of Salamanca was fought on the 21st of July, 1812,” said my host, with a matter-of-fact air.

“But—­why—­how?” I stammered, staring at him in supreme surprise.  “That is sixty years since, and you don’t look much more than fifty now.”

“All the same I am nearly fourscore,” said Mr. Fortescue, smiling as if the compliment pleased him.

“Fourscore, and so hale and strong!  I have known men half your age not half so vigorous and alert.  Why, you may live to be a hundred.”

“I think I shall, probably longer.  Of course barring accidents, and if I continue to avoid a peril which has been hanging over me for half a century or so, and from which I have several times escaped only by the skin of my teeth.”