“‘And give us a little more time in the word,’ says I.
“‘Exactly,’ said Dick.
“Well, they moved us forward two paces, and set to loading the pistols again.
“By this time we were so near that we had full opportunity to scan each other’s faces. Well, sir, I stared at him, and he at me.
“‘What!’ said I.
“‘Eh!’ said he.
“‘How’s this?’ said I.
“‘You’re not Billy Caples?’ said he.
“‘Devil a bit!’ said I, ‘nor I don’t think you are Archy Devine;’ and faith, sir, so it appeared, we were fighting away all the morning for nothing; for, somehow, it turned out it was neither of us!”
What amused me most in this anecdote was the hearing it at such a time and place. That poor Sir Harry’s eccentricities should turn up for discussion on a march in Portugal was singular enough; but after all, life is full of such incongruous accidents. I remember once supping with King Calzoo on the Blue Mountains, in Jamaica. By way of entertaining his guests, some English officers, he ordered one of his suite to sing. We were of course pleased at the opportunity of hearing an Indian war-chant, with a skull and thigh-bone accompaniment; but what was our astonishment to hear the Indian,—a ferocious-looking dog, with an awful scalp-lock, and two streaks of red paint across his chest,—clear his voice well for a few seconds, and then begin, without discomposing a muscle of his gravity, “The Laird of Cockpen!” I need not say that the “Great Raccoon” was a Dumfries man who had quitted Scotland forty years before, and with characteristic prosperity had attained his present rank in a foreign service.