“What!” cried a small mosquito, “you don’t mean to say that! Don’t you know what you have done?” (Salting turned a little pale.) “Don’t you know that after the battle of Waterloo King George the Third gave the Duke of Wellington the exclusive privilege of shooting yellowhammers on the first of September? You had better write an apology at once, or there’s no saying what may happen.” All the boys put on very serious faces, and poor Salting was fairly terrified. A letter was drafted in which Mr. Salting presented his compliments to Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington, K.G., and in stilted terms implored forgiveness for an offence unwittingly given. Two or three days later the answer came in which Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington presented _his_ compliments to Mr. Salting, with the assurance that in the circumstances, etc., etc. The offence was solemnly forgiven. Two Sundays later I was invited by old Sir Charles Mills, grandfather of the present Lord Hillingdon, to dine and sleep at Hillingdon. Mr. Algernon Greville, the Duke’s private secretary, was there. I asked him whether the Duke of Wellington had really received and answered the letter. Mr. Greville said that the Duke had not only received the letter, but, suspecting the joke, and greatly amused by it, insisted on answering it himself. Here would have been a beginning for a collection of autographs! But Salting’s tutor got hold of the letter and kept it! To the end of his life I kept up a sort of fitful friendship with that amiable man. Slim, tall, and handsome in appearance, he altered very little. The last time that I saw him was not very long before his death. I met him in King Street, just outside Christie and Manson’s, where some sale was going on. We stopped and talked, and I could not help noticing that, barring the long beard, it was still the old Salting of the yellowhammer days.