"It is a grand thought! The true war poets, after all, have been warriors themselves. Körner and Alcaeus fought as well as sang, and sang because they fought. Old Homer, too,--who can believe that he had not hewn his way through the very battles which he describes, and seen every wound, every shape of agony? A noble thought, to go out with that army against the northern Anarch, singing in the van of battle, as Taillefer sang the song of Roland before William's knights, and to die like him, the proto-martyr of the Crusade, with the melody yet upon one's lips!" And his face blazed up with excitement. "What a handsome fellow he is, after all, if there were but more of him?" said Tom to himself. "I wonder if he'd fight, though, when the singing-fever was off him." He took Elsley upstairs into his bed-room, got him washed and shaved: and sent out the woman of the house for mutton chops and stout, and began himself setting out the luncheon table, while Elsley in the room within chanted to himself snatches of poetry. "The notion has taken: he's composing a war song already, I believe." It actually was so: but Elsley's brain was weak and wandering; and he was soon silent; and motionless so long, that Tom opened the door and looked in anxiously. He was sitting on a chair, his hands fallen on his lap, the tears running down his face. "Well?" asked Tom smilingly, not noticing the tears; "how goes on the opera? I heard through the door the orchestra tuning for the prelude." Elsley looked up in his face with a puzzled piteous expression. "Do you know, Thurnall, I fancy at moments that my mind is not what it was. Fancies flit from me as quickly as they come. I had twenty verses five minutes ago, and now I cannot recollect one." "No wonder," thought Tom to himself. "My clear fellow, recollect all that you have suffered with this neuralgia. Believe me all you want is animal strength. Chops and porter will bring all the verses back, or better ones instead of them." He tried to make Elsley eat; and Elsley tried himself: but failed. The moment the meat touched his lips he loathed it, and only courtesy prevented his leaving the room to escape the smell. The laudanum had done its work upon his digestion. He tried the porter, and drank a little: then, suddenly stopping, he pulled out a phial, dropped a heavy dose of his poison into the porter, and tossed it off. "Sold am I?" said Tom to himself. "He must have hidden the bottle as he came out of the room with me. Oh, the cunning of those opium-eaters? However, it will keep him quiet just now, and to Eaton Square I must go." "You had better be quiet now, my dear fellow, after your dose; talking will only excite you. Settle yourself on my bed, and I'll be back in an hour." So he put Elsley on his bed, carefully removing razors and pistols (for he had still his fears of an outburst of passion), then locked him in, ran down into the Strand, threw himself into a cab for Eaton Square, and asked for Valencia.