"I believe it also, and the more readily from recollecting what once occurred to myself. Soon after my awkward hit at Vittoria, where I received a bullet, which I carry about with me to this hour, I was ordered home on sick leave. Landing at Falmouth from a filthy transport, feeble, feverish, solitary and wretched, I was recognized by a former intimate, who followed me to my inn and insisted upon taking me down with him into ----shire. Rest and country air, he was sure, would recruit me. In vain I explained the wretched cripple I was. In vain I submitted that the 'hospital mates,' one and all, entertained the worst opinion of my injury. He would take no denial. It was a case, he contended, not for the knife or the doctor; but for beef-steaks and Barclay's stout. And this opinion he would make good, in my instance, against the whole hospital staff at home and abroad. Too weak to contest the point, I gave in; and promised that, if living, that day week should find me at ---- House. The first part of my journey I made out with comparatively little suffering. The latter part, where I was obliged to have recourse to a hack chaise, neither wind nor weather tight--ill hung, and badly driven, was torture. At length, unable to endure longer agony, I got out; and bidding the postboy drive with my luggage to ---- House, limped along across the fields under the pilotage of an old laborer--it was a work of time--to my destination. "My gray-haired guide, who commiserated my situation, was very inquisitive about 'the war and Lord Wellington;' asked whether _all_ the Spaniards lived on 'mules' flesh fried with onions,' as he 'had been told for truth;' inquired what 'our side' thought of 'Boney's covenant with the devil,' a covenant, (according to his reading,) to this effect, that 'the devil had given Boney _a lease of luck_ for threescore and three years, and that when it was up he was to be shot by a Spanish maiden with a silver bullet.' Many folks, he said, believed all this to be true and _sartain_; but that he, for his part, 'did not _hold_ with it: what did I think?' But however talkative about the war, my venerable pilot was reserved about ---- House. I asked him if he knew it. 'These fifty years and more,' was his answer. 'The House of Mystery; good people live there now,--yes, good people, kind people,--a blessed change for all about and around the House of Mystery. More he would not utter. At length I reached the winning post, hobbled in, received a cordial welcome, and retired early to bed.