“Very well; then it’s right-about-face with you and back to Drakeport before I let you go.  Do you see this stick?  If you attempt to walk a step more towards the port, I’ll crack your head with it.”

He gulped down something in his throat.  “Is the old man ill?” he asked.

“He’s dead,” said I, simply.

The fellow turned his eyes to the horizon, and began whistling the air of “The Prickly Briar” softly to himself.  And while he whistled, my memory ran back to the day when he first came to trouble us, and play the fiend’s mischief with a couple of dear honest hearts.

The day I travelled back to was one in the prime of May, when the lilacs were out by Dr. Jago’s green gate, and the General from Drakeport Barracks, with the red and white feathers in his cocked-hat, had just cantered up the street, followed by a dozen shouting urchins, on his way to the Downs.  For it was the end of the militia-training, when the review was always held; and all the morning the bugles had been sounding at the head of every street and lane where the men were billeted.

When the gold-laced General disappeared, he left the streets all but empty; for the townspeople by this time had flocked to the Downs.  Only by Dr. Jago’s gate there stood a small group in the sunshine.  Kitty, the doctor’s mare that had pulled his gig for ten years, was standing saddled in the roadway, with a stable-boy at her head; just outside the gate, the little doctor himself in regimentals and black cocked-hat with black feathers, regarding her; behind, the pleasant old face of his wife, regarding him; and, behind again, the two maid-servants regarding the group generally from behind their mistress’s shoulder.

“Maria, I shall never do it,” said the doctor, measuring with his eye the distance between the ground and the stirrup.

“Indeed, John, I don’t think you will.”

“There was a time when I’d have vaulted it.  I’m abominably late as it is, Maria.”

“Shall I give master a leg up?” suggested one of the maids.

“No, Susan, you will do nothing of the kind.”  Mrs. Jago paused, her brow wrinkled beneath her white lace cap.  Then an inspiration came—­ “The chair—­a kitchen chair, Susan!”

The maid flew; the chair was brought; and that is how the good old doctor mounted for the review.  Three minutes later he was trotting soberly up the street, pausing twice to kiss his hand to his wife, who watched him proudly from the green gate, and took off her spectacles and wiped them, the better to see him out of sight.

By the time Dr. Jago reached the Downs, the review was in full swing.  The colonel shouted, the captains shouted, the regiment formed, re-formed, marched, charged at the double, and fired volleys of blank cartridges.  The General and orderlies galloped from spot to spot without apparent object; and all was very martial.  At last the doctor grew tired of trotting up and down without being wanted.  He thought with longing of some pools, half a mile away, in a hollow of the Downs, that contained certain freshwater shells about which he held a theory.  The afternoon was hot.  He glanced round—­no one seemed to want him:  so he turned Kitty into a grassy defile that led to the pools, and walked her leisurely away.