“That was not what I said!” complained another person, presumably Strathclyde. “You have not understood at all!”

“I am afraid I have never done any thing remotely resembling what you describe,” said Strange. “It seems rather complicated and I do not think it would work. As to how I do magic, there are many, many procedures. As many, I dare say, as for making war.”

“I should like to do magic,” said the fox-haired, fox-faced gentleman at the other end of the table. “I should have a ball every night with fairy music and fairy fireworks and I would summon all the most beautiful women out of history to attend. Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia, Maid Marian and Madame Pompadour. I should bring them all here to dance with you fellows. And when the French appeared on the horizon, I would just,” he waved his arm vaguely, “do something, you know, and they would all fall down dead.”

“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.

Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”

Lord Wellington nodded as if this was just as he would have expected. And then he said, “This road, Mr Strange, which you have been so good as to offer us, what sort of road would it be?”

“Oh! The details are the easiest thing in the world to arrange, my lord. What sort of road would you like?”

The officers and gentlemen around Lord Wellington’s dinner-table looked at each other; they had not given the matter any thought.

“A chalk road, perhaps?” said Strange, helpfully. “A chalk road is pretty.”

“Too dusty in the dry and a river of mud in the rain,” said Lord Wellington. “No, no. A chalk road will never do. A chalk road is scarcely better than no road at all.”

“What about a cobbled road?” suggested Colonel Murray.

“Cobbles will make the men’s boots wear out,” said Wellington.

“And besides the artillery will not like it,” said the fox-haired, fox-faced gentleman, “They will have a devil of a time dragging the guns along a cobbled road.”

Someone else suggested a gravel road. But that, thought Wellington, was liable to the same objection as a chalk road: it would become a river of mud in the rain – and the Portuguese did seem to think that it would rain again tomorrow.

“No,” said his lordship, “I believe, Mr Strange, that what would suit us best would be a road along the Roman pattern, with a nice ditch upon either side to drain off the water and good flat stones well fitted together on top.”

“Very well,” said Strange.

“We set off at daybreak,” said Wellington.

“Then, my lord, if someone would be good enough to shew me where the road ought to go, I shall see to it immediately.”