"We'll wait till he has felt it." Jack stood up, pushed his hands into his trouser-pockets, took one turn around the room, returned, and came to a halt on the hearth-rug. "There's another point," said he. "You fellows can never get it out of your heads that your thoroughbred is always, and necessarily, more sensitive than your mongrel. _It must be so_--you don't trouble about evidence: it's fixed in your minds _a priori_: which means that you're just as unscientific and at least as far from the truth as I should be if I posited the exact opposite . . . As a matter of fact, some miss in the breeding will usually carry with it an irritable protective nerve and keep the animal sensitive on points which the thoroughbred ignores. Your cripple thinks of his hip, your hunchback of his spine: your well-formed man takes his hip and spine for granted. Your bastard is sensitive on historical fact and predisposed to lying about it. . . . Stated thus, my counter-proposition is obvious. You won't be so ready to agree when I go on to assure you that sensitiveness in these mongrels and misfits often spreads from the centre over the whole nervous system.--But, anyway, you knew my poor hound, the pair of you. Not much breeding in Billy, eh? . . . Well, he bit four blackguards before they laid him out: bit 'em deep, too, and I won't answer for the virus. That dog died defending my papers. He fought on his honour, and he knew it, Roddy. He suffered, Jimmy--even if he was dead when they threw him into the fire. And--I'm going to give your Farrell the benefit of the doubt. . . . Where's the tobacco?" I passed him the jar. "We'll allow for the moment that you are right, Jack," said I. "At all events, you've made out a case. But where do I come in? What's the part you propose for me in this show? Pull yourself together and admit that I'm asking a sweetly reasonable question." "Didn't I explain?" Jack answered testily. "Surely I made it clear? All I ask of you is to post me out from time to time the money I ask for travelling expenses. . . . That doesn't compromise you, eh? . . . Damn it all, Roddy," he exploded, "I counted you were my friend to that extent!" "That's all right, Jack," said I. "But a friend is one thing and an accomplice is another. What's your game with Farrell? You haven't told me yet, though you're asking what gives me the right to know." He picked up his coat and hat and turned on me with a smile, very faint and weary and a trifle absent-minded.