Professional considerations made the Dean refrain from endorsing this open expression of murderous sentiment in its fullest form; a clergyman ought always to keep up some decent semblance of respect for the Gospel and the Ten Commandments--or, at least, the greater part of them. So he placed the tips of his fingers and thumbs together in the usual deliberative clerical way, gazed blankly through the gap, and answered with mild and perfunctory disapprobation: “A bullet would perhaps be an unnecessarily severe form of punishment to mete out; but I confess I could excuse the man who was so far carried away by his righteous indignation as to duck the fellow in the nearest horse-pond.” “Well, I don't know about that,” Philip replied, with an outburst of unwonted courage and originality; for he was beginning to like, and he had always from the first respected, Bertram. “There's something about the man that makes me feel--even when I differ from him most--that he believes it all, and is thoroughly in earnest. I dare say I'm wrong, but I always have a notion he's a better man than me, in spite of all his nonsense,--higher and clearer and differently constituted,--and that if only I could climb to just where he has got, perhaps I should see things in the same light that he does.” It was a wonderful speech for Philip--a speech above himself; but, all the same, by a fetch of inspiration he actually made it. Intercourse with Bertram had profoundly impressed his feeble nature. But the Dean shook his head. “A very undesirable young man for you to see too much of, I'm sure, Mr. Christy,” he said, with marked disapprobation. For, in the Dean's opinion, it was a most dangerous thing for a man to think, especially when he's young; thinking is, of course, so likely to unsettle him! The General, on the other hand, nodded his stern grey head once or twice reflectively. “He's a remarkable young fellow,” he said, after a pause; “a most remarkable young fellow. As I said before, he somehow fascinates me. I'd immensely like to put that young fellow into a smart hussar uniform, mount him on a good charger of the Punjaub breed, and send him helter-skelter, pull-devil, pull-baker, among my old friends the Duranis on the North-West frontier.” VIII While the men talked thus, Bertram Ingledew's ears ought to have burned behind the bushes. But, to say the truth, he cared little for their conversation; for had he not turned aside down one of the retired gravel paths in the garden, alone with Frida? “That's General Claviger of Herat, I suppose,” he said in a low tone, as they retreated out of ear-shot beside the clump of syringas. “What a stern old man he is, to be sure, with what a stern old face! He looks like a person capable of doing or ordering all the strange things I've read of him in the papers.” “Oh, yes,” Frida answered, misunderstanding for the moment her companion's meaning. “He's a very clever man, I believe, and a most distinguished officer.”