“Come, Sparks,” said Power, “I claim a promise you made me the other night, on condition we let you off making the oyster-patties at ten o’clock; you can’t forget what I mean.” Here the captain knowingly touched the tip of his ear, at which signal the cornet colored slightly, and drank off his wine in a hurried, confused way. “He promised to tell us, Major, how he lost the tip of his left ear. I have myself heard hints of the circumstance, but would much rather hear Sparks’s own version of it.” “Another love story,” said the doctor, with a grin, “I’ll be bound.” “Shot off in a duel?” said I, inquiringly. “Close work, too.” “No such thing,” replied Power; “but Sparks will enlighten you. It is, without exception, the most touching and beautiful thing I ever heard. As a simple story, it beats the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ to sticks.” “You don’t say so?” said poor Sparks, blushing. “Ay, that I do; and maintain it, too. I’d rather be the hero of that little adventure, and be able to recount it as you do,--for, mark me, that’s no small part of the effect,--than I’d be full colonel of the regiment. Well, I am sure I always thought it affecting. But, somehow, my dear friend, you don’t know your powers; you have that within you would make the fortune of half the periodicals going. Ask Monsoon or O’Malley there if I did not say so at breakfast, when you were grilling the old hen,--which, by-the-bye, let me remark, was not one of your _chefs-d’oeuvre_.” “A tougher beastie I never put a tooth in.” “But the story, the story,” said I. “Yes,” said Power, with a tone of command, “the story, Sparks.” “Well, if you really think it worth telling, as I have always felt it a very remarkable incident, here goes.” CHAPTER XXXII MR. SPARKS’S STORY. “I sat at breakfast one beautiful morning at the Goat Inn at Barmouth, looking out of a window upon the lovely vale of Barmouth, with its tall trees and brown trout-stream struggling through the woods, then turning to take a view of the calm sea, that, speckled over with white-sailed fishing-boats, stretched away in the distance. The eggs were fresh; the trout newly caught; the cream delicious. Before me lay the ‘Plwdwddlwn Advertiser,’ which, among the fashionable arrivals at the seaside, set forth Mr. Sparks, nephew of Sir Toby Sparks, of Manchester,--a paragraph, by the way, I always inserted. The English are naturally an aristocratic people, and set a due value upon a title.” “A very just observation,” remarked Power, seriously, while Sparks continued.