"Look at that, will you?" In the centre of the hut Tietjens was sitting bulkily on a bully-beef case that had been brought in ceremoniously by a runner. "He _does_ look beastly shabby," the general said. "There are three . . . four grease stains on his tunic. He ought to get his hair cut!" He added: "It's a perfectly damnable business. No one but this fellow would have got into it. He's a firebrand. That's what he is. A regular firebrand!" Tietjens' troubles had really shaken the general not a little. He was left up in the air. He had lived the greater part of his life with his sister, Lady Claudine Sandbach, and the greater part of the remainder of his life at Groby, at any rate after he came home from India and during the reign of Tietjens' father. He had idolized Tietjens' mother, who was a saint! What indeed there had been of the idyllic in his life had really all passed at Groby, if he came to think of it. India was not so bad, but one had to be young to enjoy that. . . . Indeed, only the day before yesterday he had been thinking that if this letter that he was thinking out did result in his being sent back, he should propose to stand for the half of the Cleveland Parliamentary Division in which Groby stood. What with the Groby influence and his nephew's in the country districts, though Castlemaine had not much land left up there, and with Sandbach's interest in the ironworking districts, he would have an admirable chance of getting in. Then he would make himself a thorn in the side of certain persons. He had thought of quartering himself on Groby. It would have been easy to get Tietjens out of the army and they could all--he, Tietjens and Sylvia--live together. It would have been his ideal of a home and of an occupation. . . . For, of course, he was getting old for soldiering: unless he got a fighting army there was not much more to it as a career for a man of sixty. If he _did_ get an army he was pretty certain of a peerage and hefty political work could still be done in the Lords. He would have a good claim on India and that meant dying a Field-Marshal. On the other hand, the only command that was at all likely to be going--except for deaths, and the health rate amongst army commanders was pretty high!--was poor Puffles'. And that would be no pleasant command--with the men all hammered to pieces. He decided to put the whole thing to Tietjens. Tietjens, like a meal-sack, was looking at him over the draft of the letter that he had just finished reading. The general said: "Well?" Tietjens said: "It's splendid, sir, to see you putting the matter so strongly. It must be put strongly, or we're lost." The general said: "You think that?" Tietjens said: "I'm sure of it, sir. . . . But unless you are prepared to throw up your command and take to politics. . . ." The general exclaimed: "You're a most extraordinary fellow. . . . That was exactly what I was thinking about: this very minute."