Next, he was promoted-away up.  He was made Medical Superintendent General, and transferred to India.  Presently he was back at the Cape again and at his escapades once more.  There were plenty of pretty girls, but none of them caught him, none of them could get hold of his heart; evidently he was not a marrying man.  And that was another marvel, another puzzle, and made no end of perplexed talk.  Once he was called in the night, an obstetric service, to do what he could for a woman who was believed to be dying.  He was prompt and scientific, and saved both mother and child.  There are other instances of record which testify to his mastership of his profession; and many which testify to his love of it and his devotion to it.  Among other adventures of his was a duel of a desperate sort, fought with swords, at the Castle.  He killed his man.

The child heretofore mentioned as having been saved by Dr. Barry so long ago, was named for him, and still lives in Cape Town.  He had Dr. Barry’s portrait painted, and gave it to the gentleman in whose old Dutch house I saw it—­the quaint figure in pink coat and high black collar.

The story seems to be arriving nowhere.  But that is because I have not finished.  Dr. Barry died in Cape Town 30 years ago.  It was then discovered that he was a woman.

The legend goes that enquiries—­soon silenced—­developed the fact that she was a daughter of a great English house, and that that was why her Cape wildnesses brought no punishment and got no notice when reported to the government at home.  Her name was an alias.  She had disgraced herself with her people; so she chose to change her name and her sex and take a new start in the world.

We sailed on the 15th of July in the Norman, a beautiful ship, perfectly appointed.  The voyage to England occupied a short fortnight, without a stop except at Madeira.  A good and restful voyage for tired people, and there were several of us.  I seemed to have been lecturing a thousand years, though it was only a twelvemonth, and a considerable number of the others were Reformers who were fagged out with their five months of seclusion in the Pretoria prison.

Our trip around the earth ended at the Southampton pier, where we embarked thirteen months before.  It seemed a fine and large thing to have accomplished—­the circumnavigation of this great globe in that little time, and I was privately proud of it.  For a moment.  Then came one of those vanity-snubbing astronomical reports from the Observatory-people, whereby it appeared that another great body of light had lately flamed up in the remotenesses of space which was traveling at a gait which would enable it to do all that I had done in a minute and a half.  Human pride is not worth while; there is always something lying in wait to take the wind out of it.