Adventure stories; British -- Portugal -- Fiction; Peninsular War, 1807-1814 -- Fiction
At the extreme right of the dais on which the table stood there was a
small oaken door set in the wall and giving access to a small ante-room
that was known, rightly or wrongly, as the abbot’s chamber. That
anteroom communicated directly with what was now the guardroom, which
accounts for the new-comer being ushered in that way by the corporal at
the time.
At the opening of that door the members of the court looked round in
sharp annoyance, suspecting here some impertinent intrusion. The next
moment, however, this was changed to respectful surprise. There was a
scraping of chairs and they were all on their feet in token of respect
for the slight man in the grey undress frock who entered. It was Lord
Wellington.
Saluting the members of the court with two fingers to his cocked hat,
he immediately desired them to sit, peremptorily waving his hand, and
requesting the president not to allow his entrance to interrupt or
interfere with the course of the inquiry.
“A chair here for me, if you please, sergeant,” he called and, when it
was fetched, took his seat at the end of the table, with his back to the
door through which he had come and immediately facing the prosecutor.
He retained his hat, but placed his riding-crop on the table before
him; and the only thing he would accept was an officer’s notes of the
proceedings as far as they had gone, which that officer himself was
prompt to offer. With a repeated injunction to the court to proceed,
Lord Wellington became instantly absorbed in the study of these notes.
Colonel Grant, standing very straight and stiff in the originally red
coat which exposure to many weathers had faded to an autumnal brown,
continued and concluded his statement of what he had seen and heard on
the night of the 28th of May in the garden at Monsanto.
The judge-advocate now invited him to turn his memory back to the
luncheon-party at Sir Terence’s on the 27th, and to tell the court
of the altercation that had passed on that occasion between Captain
Tremayne and Count Samoval.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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