"You understand that if I fail you, it will be through no want of zeal?"
"My friend"—the Major turned on him with a smile at once magnanimous and tender—"I believe you ask nothing better than to accompany me."
"To the death!" said the Doctor, in a low voice and fervently. Then, after a pause full of emotion, "Your dispositions are all taken?"
"All, I believe. Chinn has drawn up a new will for me, which I have signed, and it lies at this moment in my deed-box. I took the liberty to appoint you an executor."
"You would not ask me to survive you!" (O Friendship! O exemplars of a sterner age! O Rome! O Cato!) "Not to mention," went on the Doctor, "that I must be by five or six years your senior, and in the ordinary course of events—"
Major Hymen dismissed the ordinary course of events with a wave of the hand.
"I ask it as a personal favour."
"It is an honour then, and I accede."
"For the rest, I am keeping that fellow Smellie on the qui vive. For three days past he has been promenading the cliffs with his spy-glass. I would not lightly depreciate any man, but Smellie has one serious fault—he is ambitious."
"Such men are to be found in every walk of life."