His life is made up of mistakes and explanations." He spoke bitterly, "He broke into the nunnery under a misapprehension, according to the account of the sergeant who accompanied him," and Sir Terence read out that part of the report.

"But how is that to help him, and at such a time as this, with public feeling as it is, and Wellington in his present temper about it?
The provost's men are beating the country for the blackguard.

When they find him it's a firing party he'll have to face." Tremayne turned slowly to the window and looked down the fair prospect of the hillside over a forest of cork oaks alive with fresh green shoots to the silver sheen of the river a mile away.

The storms of the preceding week had spent their fury--the travail that had attended the birth of Spring--and the day was as fair as a day of June in England.
Weaned forth by the generous sunshine, the burgeoning of vine and fig, of olive and cork went on apace, and the skeletons of trees which a fortnight since had stood gaunt and bare were already fleshed in tender green.
From the window of this fine conventual house on the heights of Monsanto, above the suburb of Alcantara, where the Adjutant-General had taken up his quarters, Captain Tremayne stood a moment considering the panorama spread to his gaze, from the red-brown roofs of Lisbon on his left--that city which boasted with Rome that it was built upon a cluster of seven hills--to the lines of embarkation that were building about the fort of St.Julian on his left.

Then he turned, facing again the spacious, handsome room with its heavy, semi-ecclesiastical furniture, and Sir Terence, who, hunched in his chair at the ponderously carved black writing-table, scowled fiercely at nothing.
"What are you going to do, sir ?" he inquired.
Sir Terence shrugged impatiently and heaved himself up in his chair.
"Nothing," he growled.
"Nothing ?" The interrogation, which seemed almost to cover a reproach, irritated the adjutant.
"And what the devil can I do ?" he rapped.
"You've pulled Dick out of scrapes before now." "I have.