What about that bustard ?' A very tall, spare man, who seemed to rouse himself from a nap, resumed his story of bustard-stalking in Spain last spring.

Carnaby, who knew the country well, listened with lively interest, and followed with reminiscences of his own.

He told of a certain boar, shot in the Sierras, which weighed something like four hundred pounds.

He talked, too, of flamingoes on the 'marismas' of the Guadalquivir; of punting day after day across the tawny expanse of water; of cooking his meals on sandy islets at a fire made of tamarisk and thistle; of lying wakeful in the damp, chilly nights, listening to frogs and bitterns.
Then again of his ibex-hunting on the Cordilleras of Castile, when he brought down that fine fellow whose head adorned his room, the horns just thirty-eight inches long.

And in the joy of these recollections there seemed to sound a regretful note, as if he spoke of things gone by and irrecoverable, no longer for him.
One of the men present had recently been in Cyprus, and mentioned it with disgust.