It had been a walled town, too; indeed, the old wall still remained, only that, in the very place and beauty of less stirring times, the wall had become a mere grass-grown bank, with flowers and shrubs growing all about it. But here the captain was in his element; he could point out how the town would be attacked from this direction, or how an invading force would come from there; would draw sketches in the gravel with the point of his cane to illustrate exactly how _he_ would have defended it, had he been alive in those times, and how he would have made it absolutely impregnable. Comethup, gazing at him with delighted eyes, came to believe that he was absolutely the greatest general and master of the art of war that had ever existed, instead of a poor little half-pay captain whose name had never been heard of. There was a quiet and sleepy little river, too, which ran just outside the town under a stone bridge; and the captain used to lean over the parapet of the bridge, on sunny afternoons, while Comethup sat on the stonework beside him, and they used to fish for the bright, gleaming, darting little creatures in the river below. They very rarely caught anything: it was a great event when they did; but the captain used to explain exactly how various kinds of fishing could be accomplished with the minimum of ease and the maximum of success. The captain always seemed to know how to tell one the best way of doing a variety of clever things, but he never seemed to have accomplished very much in a practical sense; Comethup used to think sadly, in after years, that if the captain had only been able to do half the things he could tell other people how to do, he might have been a general at the very least, with his breast ablaze of medals and orders. But Comethup loved him devotedly, just as he was, and would not have had him changed for the wide world.