"Help, help, coomrades o' mine!" quoth the dragoon, bursting with laughter; "I'm gaun be moorthered wi' a little booy that's gane mad, and toorned Chartist." I dragged Crossthwaite off; for what was jest to the soldiers, I saw, by his face, was fierce enough earnest to him. We walked on a little, in silence. "Now," I said, "that was a good-natured fellow enough, though he was a soldier. You and he might have cracked many a joke together, if you did but understand each other;--and he was a countryman of yours, too." "I may crack something else besides jokes with him some day," answered he, moodily. "'Pon my word, you must take care how you do it. He is as big as four of us." "That vile aristocrat, the old Italian poet--what's his name?--Ariosto--ay!--he knew which quarter the wind was making for, when he said that fire-arms would be the end of all your old knights and gentlemen in armour, that hewed down unarmed innocents as if they had been sheep. Gunpowder is your true leveller--dash physical strength! A boy's a man with a musket in his hand, my chap!" "God forbid," I said, "that I should ever be made a man of in that way, or you either. I do not think we are quite big enough to make fighters; and if we were, what have we got to fight about?" "Big enough to make fighters?" said he, half to himself; "or strong enough, perhaps?--or clever enough?--and yet Alexander was a little man, and the Petit Caporal, and Nelson, and Cæsar, too; and so was Saul of Tarsus, and weakly he was into the bargain. Æsop was a dwarf, and so was Attila; Shakspeare was lame; Alfred, a rickety weakling; Byron, clubfooted;--so much for body _versus_ spirit--brute force _versus_ genius--genius." I looked at him; his eyes glared like two balls of fire. Suddenly he turned to me. "Locke, my boy, I've made an ass of myself, and got into a rage, and broken a good old resolution of mine, and a promise that I made to my dear little woman--bless her! and said things to you that you ought to know nothing of for this long time; but those red-coats always put me beside myself. God forgive me!" And he held out his hand to me cordially. "I can quite understand your feeling deeply on one point," I said, as I took it, "after the sad story you told me; but why so bitter on all? What is there so very wrong about things, that we must begin fighting about it?" "Bless your heart, poor innocent! What is wrong?--what is not wrong? Wasn't there enough in that talk with Mackaye, that you told me of just now, to show anybody that, who can tell a hawk from a hand-saw?" "Was it wrong in him to give himself such trouble about the education of a poor young fellow, who has no tie on him, who can never repay him?"