That was the part for the officer; we are speaking of the General. For
that matter, he had as keen an eye for the field and the moment for his
arm to strike as any Murat. One world have liked to see Murat matched
against the sabre of a wily Rajpoot! As to campaigns and strategy, Lord
Ormont's head was a map. What of Murat and Lord Ormont horse to horse
and sword to sword? Come, imagine that, if you are for comparisons. And
if Lord Ormont never headed a lot of thousands, it does not prove he was
unable. Lord Ormont was as big as Murat. More, he was a Christian to
his horses. How about Murat in that respect? Lord Ormont cared for his
men: did Murat so particularly much? And he was as cunning fronting
odds, and a thunderbolt at the charge. Why speak of him in the past?
He is an English lord, a lord by birth, and he is alive; things may be
expected of him to-morrow or next day.

Shalders here cut Matey short by meanly objecting to that.

"Men are mortal," he said, with a lot of pretended stuff, deploring our
human condition in the elegy strain; and he fell to reckoning the English
hero's age--as that he, Lord Ormont, had been a name in the world for the
last twenty-five years or more. The noble lord could be no chicken. We
are justified in calculating, by the course of nature, that his term of
activity is approaching, or has approached, or, in fact, has drawn to its
close.

"If your estimate, sir, approaches to correctness," rejoined Matey--
tellingly, his comrades thought.

"Sixty, as you may learn some day, is a serious age, Matthew Weyburn."

Matey said he should be happy to reach it with half the honours Lord