‘All ready, Mary?’ said Mr. Jervase in a ringing and cheery voice. ‘That’s well. Don’t forget what I’ve told you, lads: fine young chaps like you ought not to desert their Queen and country in the hour of need. I’ll keep my promise. Any one of you as takes the sergeant’s shilling can claim a pound for bounty money from old Jack Jervase.’ So saying, he rolled, with a nautical gait, towards the door by which the domestic had re-entered the room, and having reached the stairfoot, and finding himself alone, he added, with a sudden snarl, ‘I’d like to give three of ye a chance of earning a wooden leg anyhow--coming into my house and guzzling my best beer the very minute my back’s turned on ye.’ He found a cheerful fire blazing in his own room, and dry clothing laid out before it. He began to undress, casting his coat into one corner of the room, with a gesture of exasperation, and his waistcoat into another. He tugged at his bootlaces angrily, muttering to himself meanwhile mere scraps of speech in which the words ‘beer,’ and ‘waste,’ and ‘guzzling beasts,’ were audible. When he had stripped completely, he gave himself a lusty towelling from head to foot, and then struggled into the warm, dry raiment prepared for him. As at the completion of his toilet he stood with a pair of stiff military brushes working at his hair and whiskers, before a big cheval glass, he looked eminently British for his day. The style is a little changing now, but the thick-set sturdy figure, the full paunch, the blunt scowling features, the cold grey eyes, the double chin, the firm yet sensual mouth, were all expressive of his type. The suit of pilot cloth into which he had changed gave him something of a seafaring look; but the high white collar, the shining black satin stock, the heavy gold chain which trailed across his waistcoat, and the clean-trimmed hirsute mutton-chop on either side the heavy jowl combined to make him intensely respectable to look at. He thrust his feet into a pair of wool-lined slippers, which he had left toasting till the last moment before the fire, and took his way downstairs, and along the passage which traversed the whole side of the house. His face was drawn into a heavy frown as he thrust open the door he came to, and he entered the room with a cough of magisterial importance. A tall, gaunt man, with stooping shoulders, rose to meet him, and the expression of Mr. Jervase’s face changed as if by magic. Something of such a change had taken place between his looking in on the rustics assembled round his kitchen fire and his appearance amongst them. But now it was even swifter, and more pronounced.