Among the many serious periodicals of strictly Imperial tone that Mr Ffolliot read, was one that from time to time indulged its readers with exceptionally well-written short stories. Quite recently a couple of these stories had dealt with military subjects, and were signed "Ubique." The stories were striking, strong, and evidently from the pen of one who knew his ground. Mr Ffolliot admired them, and graciously drew the attention of his family to them. One had appeared in the January number, and Mrs Ffolliot and Mary fell foul of it because it was too painful. They thought it pitiless, even savage, in its inexorable disregard of the individual and deification of the Cause. Grantly, of course, upheld the writer. The male of the species prides itself on inhumanity in youth. Mr Ffolliot approved the story from the artistic standpoint, and the General defended it on the score of its absolute truth. Reggie, quite contrary to custom, gave no opinion at all till he was asked by Mary, one day when they were riding together. As she expected, he defended the writer's stern realism. But what she did not expect was that he seemed to make a personal matter of it, almost imploring her to see eye to eye with him, which she wholly failed to do. "I think he must be a terribly hard man, that 'Ubique,'" she said at last, "with no toleration or compassion. He talks as though incompetence were an unpardonable crime." "So it is; if you undertake a job you ought to see that you're fit to carry it out." "You can't always be sure. . . . You may do your best and . . . fail." "I grant you some people's best is a very poor best, but in this case the man let a flabby humanitarianism take the place of his judgment, and he caused far more misery in the end. Can't you see that?" "All the same," Mary said decidedly, "I wouldn't like to fall into the hands of that man, the Ubique man I mean, not the failure. He must be a cold-blooded wretch, or he couldn't write such things. It makes me shudder." And Mary shivered as she spoke. "He must be a beast," she added. They were walking their horses along the turf at the side of the road skirting the woods. Reggie pulled up and Mary stopped also a little in front. "Got a stone?" she asked carelessly. Reggie did not answer or dismount, and she turned in her saddle to look at him, to meet his crooked, whimsical smile. Suddenly he dropped his reins and beat his breast, exclaiming melodramatically: "And Nathan said unto David, 'Thou art the man.'" "What on earth do you mean?" Mary asked, bewildered. "What man? do you mean you'd behave like the man in the story, or you wouldn't, or . . . Oh, Reggie, you don't mean to say you wrote it yourself?" "You have spoken." "You must be awfully clever!" Mary ejaculated with awe-struck admiration. "My cleverness will not be of much comfort to me if you persist in your wrong-headed opinion that the man who wrote that story is a beast."