Urquhart, at the time when I sat to him, was a man of sixty years or thereabout; yet he marched up and down the floor of his workshop with the step of a hill-bred lad, his whole body sharing the rhythm of his beating, his clean-shaven face with the flush of a winter apple, the more noticeable in contrast with the linen smock he used as an overall while at work among his clay. The deep old-fashioned side-drum swinging at his groin seemed to have none of a drum’s monotony. It expressed (at all events to me that have some fancy) innumerable ecstasies and emotions—alarms, entreaties, defiances, gaieties, and regrets, the dreadful sentiment of forlorn hopes, the murmur of dubious battalions in countries of ambush. The sound of the drum is, unhappily, beyond typographical expression, though long custom makes us complacently accept “rat-a-tat-tat” or “rub-a-dub-dub” as quite explanatory of its every phrase and accent; but I declare the sculptor brought from it the very pang of love. Alternated with the martial uproar of rouses, retreats, chamades, and marches that made the studio shake, it rose into the clerestory and lingered in the shades of the umber roof, this gentle combination of taps and _roulades_, like the appeal of one melodiously seeking admission at his mistress’s door. “You had no idea that I handled sticks so terrifically?” said he, relinquishing the instrument at last, and returning to his proper task of recording my lineaments in the preparatory clay. “You play marvellously, Mr Urquhart,” I said, astonished. “I had no idea you added the drum to your—to your accomplishments.” “Well, there you have me revealed—something of a compliment to you, I assure you, for I do not beat my drum for everybody. If I play well it is, after all, no wonder, for with a side-drum and a pair of sticks I earned a living for seven years and travelled among the most notable scenes of Europe.” “So?” I said, and waited. He pinched the clay carefully to make the presentment of the lobe of my ear, and stood back from his work a moment to study the effect. “Yes,” he said, “few people know of it; and perhaps it is as well, for it might not be counted wholly to the credit of an R.S.A. if it were known; but for seven years I played the side-drum in the ranks of the 71st. I played from Torres Vedras to the Pyrenees, at Vimiera, Corunna, Talavera, Busaco, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajos, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo. Lord! the very names go dirling through my heart. They were happy days, I assure you, when I—when I—” “Thumped the skin,” I ventured foolishly, as he paused to make a line of some importance on my effigy. He corrected me with a vexed air.