"I have been talking, too, with Ben." "So have I, Mary; so have I." Lady Pomfret smiled. "Are you quite sure, Geoffrey, that you have been talking with Ben, and not at him? He is too courteous to interrupt you and too kind to contradict you." "What does old Ben say to you?" "What Susan Yellam says. The villagers, generally, believe that our present army and navy can beat a world in arms against us. You disabused them of that this evening, but Captain Davenant undid some of your stitches." The Squire fumed a little. "The old boy let them have it straight from the shoulder." "Exactly. Personally, I deplore such methods." "Sheep have to be yapped into the fold." "I wonder if Mr. Hamlin thinks so?" Thus challenged, Hamlin spoke--tentatively. "I have never been able to regard men and women as animals. I admit a superficial similarity. Dogs are nearest to us, but what an Atlantic stretches between us and them! Would any training turn a Pekinese into a pointer? Or a pug into a greyhound? But you can train any child, of any nationality, into what you reasonably please, provided always that you are dealing with a sound mind in a sound body. Sheep, under certain conditions, have to be yapped into folds, because they are sheep. The Prussian system yaps men into the ranks. I would sooner try other methods." The Squire inclined his handsome head. "Try your own methods, Hamlin, and good luck to you." He answered quietly: "I shall try them next Sunday." "You don't say so? From the pulpit?" "Why not?" "I approve with all my heart." For the moment it rested there. Lionel began to talk of his coming campaign. The elder men and both the women, wife and mother, listened to his young, eager voice. How keen he was! How sure of himself and of his men, particularly the men. He talked persistently of Mr. Thomas Atkins, of his artful divagations in peace and his whole-souled valour in war. Hamlin reflected that it was good to listen to such talk, good to be young and valiant, at such a time, good even to die, if the supreme sacrifice were demanded, clean of limb and mind, leaping joyously upward, unfettered by disease or vice, _fit_--to use the boy's own word--for the greatest adventure of all. He heard his own boy speaking, just such another! Britain had thousands of them, the fine flower of careful training, of a courtesy constantly exercised, of a courage sharpened to finest edge by the grindstone of games and sports, of an intelligence not quite so keenly tempered, but alert enough in moments of stress, of a "morale" which nothing could dismay. Surely they would be invincible?