"All right! I won't say anything before her; but this young chap has set me thinking; he seemed so strange." Other people thought Fred Denville strange, notably Major Rockley, who, in company with Sir Matthew Bray and Sir Harry Payne, was on the Parade, as, with brows knit and eyes bent down, the dragoon came along, walking swiftly. The three officers were in undress uniform, having just left parade, and each carried his riding-whip. Fred did not notice them, he was too deep in thought, and walking straight on he went right between them, unintentionally giving Sir Matthew Bray a rough thrust with his shoulder, for of course an officer could not give way to a private. It was Fred Denville's duty, in the character of James Bell, private dragoon, to have saluted his officers and given them all the path, if necessary; but at that moment he could see nothing but the grey white-faced old man in the cell at the gaol, in peril of his life and threatened with a felon's death. "I must have been drunk," he was muttering to himself. "Yes: I remember, I was horribly drunk that night, and didn't know what I was doing. Poor old father! with all your faults you did not deserve this. Yes: I must have been drunk." At this point he was brought from his musings to the present by a stinging cut from a riding-whip across the back, his tight uniform being so little protection that the sharp whalebone seemed to divide the flesh. With a cry of rage he turned round, and flung out his fist, striking Sir Harry Payne, who had given the blow with the whip, full on the nose, and sending him backwards. "You insolent dog!" "You scoundrel!" The epithets were delivered in a breath by Major Rockley and Sir Matthew Bray, just as Lord Carboro' approached, walking by Lady Drelincourt's bath-chair. It was an opportunity for showing how an insolent drunken private should be treated; and as several loungers of society were coming up, the two officers accompanied their words with a couple of blows from their whips. It is dangerous to play with edged tools, is proverbially said; and, in his then frame of mind, Fred Denville felt no longer that he was James Bell, the disciplined, kept-down servant and private. He felt as a man smarting from the blows he had received. The service, the penalty for striking an officer, were as nothing to him then; he saw only the big, pompous, insolent bully of his regiment, Sir Matthew Bray, and the man who had insulted him a thousand times, which he could have forgiven, and his sister again and again, which he could not forgive. With one bound he was upon Sir Matthew Bray, whom he struck full in the chest, so that he staggered back, tripped his heels on the front wheel of Lady Drelincourt's bath-chair, and fell heavily into the road. With another bound he was upon Rockley, who had followed and struck him again a sharp, stinging cut.