"He _has_ got ideas!" young Lechmere broke out to his instructor after his comrade had quitted the house. He was evidently bewildered and agitated--he had an emotion to work off. He had before dinner gone straight at his friend, as Mr. Coyle had requested, and had elicited from him that his scruples were founded on an overwhelming conviction of the stupidity--the "crass barbarism" he called it--of war. His great complaint was that people hadn't invented anything cleverer, and he was determined to show, the only way he could, that _he_ wasn't such an ass. "And he thinks all the great generals ought to have been shot, and that Napoleon Bonaparte in particular, the greatest, was a criminal, a monster for whom language has no adequate name!" Mr. Coyle rejoined, completing young Lechmere's picture. "He favoured you, I see, with exactly the same pearls of wisdom that he produced for me. But I want to know what _you_ said." "I said they were awful rot!" Young Lechmere spoke with emphasis, and he was slightly surprised to hear Mr. Coyle laugh incongruously at this just declaration and then after a moment continue: "It's all very curious--I daresay there's something in it. But it's a pity!" "He told me when it was that the question began to strike him in that light. Four or five years ago, when he did a lot of reading about all the great swells and their campaigns--Hannibal and Julius Cæsar, Marlborough and Frederick and Bonaparte. He _has_ done a lot of reading, and he says it opened his eyes. He says that a wave of disgust rolled over him. He talked about the 'immeasurable misery' of wars, and asked me why nations don't tear to pieces the governments, the rulers that go in for them. He hates poor old Bonaparte worst of all." "Well, poor old Bonaparte was a brute. He was a frightful ruffian," Mr. Coyle unexpectedly declared. "But I suppose you didn't admit that." "Oh, I daresay he was objectionable, and I'm very glad we laid him on his back. But the point I made to Wingrave was that his own behaviour would excite no end of remark." Young Lechmere hesitated an instant, then he added: "I told him he must be prepared for the worst." "Of course he asked you what you meant by the 'worst,'" said Spencer Coyle. "Yes, he asked me that, and do you know what I said? I said people would say that his conscientious scruples and his wave of disgust are only a pretext. Then he asked 'A pretext for what?'" "Ah, he rather had you there!" Mr. Coyle exclaimed with a little laugh that was mystifying to his pupil. "Not a bit--for I told him." "What did you tell him?" Once more, for a few seconds, with his conscious eyes in his instructor's, the young man hung fire. "Why, what we spoke of a few hours ago. The appearance he'd present of not having----" The honest youth faltered a moment, then brought it out: "The military temperament, don't you know? But do you know what he said to that?" young Lechmere went on.