The military attaché’s voice cut, harsh and unfriendly, across the great thatched and timbered hall. “By Jupiter and his seven-headed dog, but I can show you a sort of magic to beat that!”

Heavy with the native mead, he clattered and stumbled through the peat-smoke towards the log-fire in the centre of the hall, the silver bracelets at his wrists making gleaming arcs in the firelight as he swung his long arms about drunkenly. He was a short man, almost as broad as he was high, bull-necked, and bow-legged from much riding, swarthy as an African, with curling black hair and bright Spanish eyes, an ex-centurion, risen from the ranks, whose coloured ribbons, hanging from the shoulders of his body-armour, proclaimed the service as a soldier in India, Scythia and Germany that lay behind him.