I gave a little indrawn gasp and turned about.  There stood the Major, plainly himself, with a pleasant smile on his face.

“What’s up?” said he.

He spoke abstractedly, pulling at his cigar; and I answered rudely, “That’s a damned bad looking-glass of yours!”

“I didn’t know there was anything wrong with it,” he said, still abstracted and apart.  And, indeed, when by sheer mental effort I forced myself to look again, there stood my companion as he stood in the room.

I gave a tremulous laugh, muttered something or nothing, and fell to examining the books in the case.  But my fingers shook a trifle as I aimlessly pulled out one volume after another.

“Am I getting fanciful?” I thought—­“I whose business it is to give practical account of every bugbear of the nerves.  Bah!  My liver must be out of order.  A speck of bile in one’s eye may look a flying dragon.”

I dismissed the folly from my mind, and set myself resolutely to inspecting the books marshalled before me.  Roving amongst them, I pulled out, entirely at random, a thin, worn duodecimo, that was thrust well back at a shelf end, as if it shrank from comparison with its prosperous and portly neighbours.  Nothing but chance impelled me to the choice; and I don’t know to this day what the ragged volume was about.  It opened naturally at a marker that lay in it—­a folded slip of paper, yellow with age; and glancing at this, a printed name caught my eye.

With some stir of curiosity, I spread the slip out.  It was a title-page to a volume, of poems, presumably; and the author was James Shrike.

I uttered an exclamation, and turned, book in hand.

“An author!” I said.  “You an author, Major Shrike!”

To my surprise, he snapped round upon me with something like a glare of fury on his face.  This the more startled me as I believed I had reason to regard him as a man whose principles of conduct had long disciplined a temper that was naturally hasty enough.

Before I could speak to explain, he had come hurriedly across the room and had rudely snatched the paper out of my hand.

“How did this get—­” he began; then in a moment came to himself, and apologized for his ill manners.

“I thought every scrap of the stuff had been destroyed”, he said, and tore the page into fragments.  “It is an ancient effusion, doctor—­perhaps the greatest folly of my life; but it’s something of a sore subject with me, and I shall be obliged if you’ll not refer to it again.”

He courted my forgiveness so frankly that the matter passed without embarrassment; and we had our game and spent a genial evening together.  But memory of the queer little scene stuck in my mind, and I could not forbear pondering it fitfully.

Surely here was a new side-light that played upon my friend and superior a little fantastically.

* * * * *