Notwithstanding this, however, Paul had often sore conflict with himself and was hard put to it to endure the humiliations which Asa put upon him. For in the matter of retaliations Paul was severely handicapped by his religious convictions. The majestic simplicity of the Sermon on the Mount, in such matters as anger and retaliations, hampered him. The impossibility of the _lex talionis_ had been instilled into his soul by his mother’s doctrine in these matters which, by the way, was quite undiluted by the ingenious refinements of a school of interpretation which sought a place in that sublime ethical code for wrath, hatred, revenge and such like exercises of the human soul. His mother, simple soul, had only one method of interpretation, that of the childlike spirit. Consequently Paul’s limitation in the way of the ordinary human reactions to such tyrannies and wrongs as are the lot of the weak at the hands of the strong were serious enough. After much long and painful meditation Paul had achieved a working theory of ethics in regard to rights of freemen under the yoke of a tyrant. He was quite clear about that. He had cunningly extracted from the gallant Colonel his opinion as to legitimate causes for war and he had come to the fixed conviction that, given a worthy cause, war was praiseworthy and right, care being taken to exclude all purely selfish motives. In the early days of Asa’s tyrannous conduct, nearly two years ago, Paul made the painful discovery that he was afraid of his enemy. It was then that he had approached the Colonel with the request that he be taught to fight. He hated to feel afraid. It lowered his self-respect immeasurably. More than that, it deprived him of that fine glow of heroic virtue arising from his voluntary endurance without retaliation of many acts of persecution. It was this resolve to overcome the weakening and abasing sense of fear by learning how to fight that spurred him to endure the somewhat strenuous instructions of the little fighting Colonel in the manly art. It was a glorious September morning and the Colonel was ready for his morning ride. There was a shimmer of heat over the landscape and a promise of thunder in the air. A breathless stillness had fallen upon all things, and over the fields and the distant woods the September haze hung like a thin blue veil. It had been a successful season on the ranch. The fruit crops had been abundant and through the agency of the newly organised Fruit Growers’ Association had been fairly well marketed. The harvest had been quite up to the average, and within a day or two would be safely stacked or under cover. The Colonel had abundant reason for satisfaction with life, and should have worn a much happier face. His wife, reading his face like an open page, broke forth into protest. “I don’t see why you should go around looking like that,” she said impatiently.