"By the way," he said, "to what address shall I return the horse?—a pretty animal, begad!" "I’m quartered at a worthy alderman’s in the Calle de Moros—El Regidor Don Perez Gerrion; my name’s Lumsden." "Lumsden!" repeated the stranger with a start, letting the reins fall on the horse’s neck. "Yes," said Jack, looking up in surprise. "Why?" "Oh! Excuse me now. I have my despatches to deliver, and then I will call on you at the regidor’s. I have a communication, probably, to make to you. Au revoir!" With a wave of the hand he galloped off, leaving Jack to tramp along behind him, in some wonderment as to what communication a despatch-rider could have to make to a subaltern of the 95th. *CHAPTER II* *Some Introductions* The Grampus—A Turn with the Foils—An Interruption—Enter a Regidor—Flour and Water—A Soft Answer—Pepito—Biographical—Captain O’Hare—Mr. Vaughan is announced It began to rain when Jack was still two miles out of Salamanca, and he was wet and chilled when, having put up the stranger’s horse, he entered the regidor’s house and sought the general room, where, as he knew from the sounds of laughter proceeding from it, his friends and comrades were assembled. There was a universal shout as Jack pushed open the door. "Here’s the commissary-general!" cried a tall, fair-headed subaltern of seventeen years. "Look here, Jack, if this corn-chandler business of yours gets you promotion before me, I’ll—I’ll punch your head." "Thanks! Pommy, my dear, unless you’re careful, respectful, you know, you’ll find your next billet will be a stable or a pig-stye; you can take your choice. A pig-stye would be the easier got, perhaps—this country teems with porkers; but there are plenty of mules too, and one more won’t matter." "All the same, Lumsden," said Harry Smith, a lieutenant of twenty-one, "I don’t wonder Pomeroy’s jealous. We didn’t all have the luck to be babies in Spain! But let me introduce a friend of mine—an old school-chum. Lumsden—Dugdale, Percy Dugdale, otherwise the Grampus." Jack found his right hand engulfed in a huge fist, and shaken almost to a jelly. It belonged to a tall young man in civilian dress, stout, massive, broad-shouldered, with a rubicund, open, ingenuous face, and a smile that bespoke friendliness at once. "Heard of you," said Dugdale cordially. "Heard of your little bet. Reminds me of my wager with Blinks of Merton when I was a freshman. Bet me a pound to a polony I wouldn’t screw up a proctor; loser to eat the polony. I won—and bought a champion polony in St. Aldate’s. Blinks stood us a supper to be let off. Ha! ha!" The Honourable Percy Dugdale’s chuckle had a quality of its own. While it seldom resulted from what others would have regarded as wit or humour, it never failed to breed sympathetic laughter, and the room rang with appreciative merriment.