On the occasion of this visit I found a fellow guest, the identical WILFRID COBBYN whom I have already mentioned. He had been there for a fortnight, I learnt from ALEXANDER, the eldest hope of the TEMPESTS, and had made himself a favourite with every member of the family. How they got to know him I never quite discovered--indeed, I doubt if any of them could have told me--and as to his previous history all they seemed to know was that his father had property "somewhere in the West of England," that he himself had travelled a great deal, and was now close upon thirty years old. I am free to admit that after my first dinner in his company I had very little inclination to worry myself about the details of his past, so cheerful and fascinating did I find his gay companionship. I cannot quite explain the charm of the man. He had a roving blue eye, a ruddy and glowing complexion, and a laugh that seemed to kick all gloomy fancies into flinders, and to carry those who heard it in a helter-skelter gallop of mirth. And then what stories the fellow could tell! He had the General and me in perpetual convulsions, and even ALEXANDER, a somewhat awkward and taciturn youth, much weighed down by the responsibilities of his freshmanhood at Oxford, was pleased to unbend and smile approvingly at the amazing sallies of the wizard COBBYN. One story I remember in particular, though I dare not attempt to repeat it as COBBYN told it. It was about the wretched adventures of a certain travelling companion of his on a shooting expedition in Albania. It was a story that never seemed to cease,--a bad recommendation for most stories, I admit; but in this case so artfully and with such surprising humour and force was it told, so vividly did it depict a long series of ludicrous sufferings culminating in the total loss of the sufferer's clothes and his involuntary appearance in the full uniform of a Turkish Zaptieh, with other surprising and endless episodes, that at the last we had in the midst of our gasps of helpless laughter to implore the narrator to stop for the sake of our sides and the resounding rafters of the General's house.