’Good-bye, Billums!’ Gerald sang out after me. ’Don’t be conceited when they cheer you. I’m thankful you’re to be in my place.’ Well, I don’t mind saying, honestly, that, if I could, I would have changed places with him then, because old Gerald was such a splendid chap and had done such grand things and I was only a rotter. The ’Gnome’ led me down through the Club, but I seemed half dazed and didn’t notice a soul there; one of Gerald’s horses was waiting for me outside the arched gateway where I had first seen that little beast, I got on his back, and then heard Ginger’s voice singing out, ’Buck up, old Billums! Bob and I will hang round till you come back.’ Buck up? I could have blubbed more easily as I rode after the ’Gnome’ with a couple of nigger orderlies trotting behind me. ’Señor! Señor!’ I heard the ’Gnome’ mutter imploringly, and saw him pushing up his own chin with his finger and then pointing to mine, so I sat more upright and held my head higher. Directly we got into the main street, the place was one seething mass of waving arms and flags, people pressed round my horse and even kissed my gaiters, and the whole air was alive with shouts of ’_Viva Don Geraldio!_’ I tried to do what Gerald would have done and smiled, and by the time we’d managed to force a way through into the great square, the shouting was really extraordinary. The people stopped my horse, and if a very officious young cavalry officer had not brought up a half-squadron of his men, I do believe they would have pulled me off my saddle in their excitement. However, we got through them all right and cantered up the road to San Sebastian, round which the little brown forest-men were camped. My aunt! miserable as I was, it made my blood dance to hear their shouts and to know how keen they were on my brother. As I entered the fort across the drawbridge, General Zorilla was waiting for me, clicked his heels and saluted gravely as I dismounted. Then he took me by the arm and led me away to an upper part of the wall, where it was just broad enough for two to walk abreast, and talked all the time—in Spanish, of course—and, though I could not understand a word, I guessed quickly that he’d taken me up there, where no one else could come and try to talk to me, and where all the people, both inside and outside the fort, could see me. I thought that probably a rumour of Gerald’s having been shot by an assassin had spread, and that old Zorilla feared what the forest-men would do if they believed it. We walked solemnly up and down for, I should think, quite twenty minutes, and then the President drove up in a carriage, drawn by six white horses, and it was time for the procession to start. General Zorilla gave some orders, and immediately there was a stir among the little brown chaps. A great column of them, quite two thousand I should imagine by the time they took to pass beneath us, wound round the fort and began marching down into the town.