er than florid in his acts and manners, a
boy with a pale face, incorrigible hair and brown eyes that went dark
and deep with excitement. Several times White had seen him excited, and
when he was excited Benham was capable of tensely daring things. On one
occasion he had insisted upon walking across a field in which was an
aggressive bull. It had been put there to prevent the boys taking
a short cut to the swimming place. It had bellowed tremendously and
finally charged him. He had dodged it and got away; at the time it had
seemed an immense feat to White and the others who were safely up
the field. He had walked to the fence, risking a second charge by his
deliberation. Then he had sat on the fence and declared his intention
of always crossing the field so long as the bull remained there. He had
said this with white intensity, he had stopped abruptly in mid-sentence,
and then suddenly he had dropped to the ground, clutched the fence,
struggled with heaving shoulders, and been sick.

The combination of apparently stout heart and manifestly weak stomach
had exercised the Minchinghampton intelligence profoundly.

On one or two other occasions Benham had shown courage of the same
rather screwed-up sort. He showed it not only in physical but in mental
things. A boy named Prothero set a fashion of religious discussion
in the school, and Benham, after some self-examination, professed an
atheistical republicanism rather in the manner of Shelley. This brought
him into open conflict with Roddles, the History Master. Roddles had
discovered these theological controversies in some mysterious way, and
he took upon himself to talk at Benham and Prothero. He treated them to
the common misapplication of that fool who "hath said in his heart there
is no God." He did not perceive there was any difference between the
fool who says a thing in his heart and one who says it in the dormitory.
He revived that delectable anecdote of the Eton boy who professed
disbelief and was at once "soundly flogged" by his head master. "Years
afterwards that boy came back to thank ----"

"Gurr," said Prothero softly. "STEW--ard!"

"Your turn next, Benham," whispered an orthodox controversialist.

"Good Lord! I'd like to see him," said Benham with a forced loudness
that could scarcely be ignored.

The subsequent controversy led to an interview with the head. From
it Benham emerged more whitely strung up than ever. "He said he would
certainly swish me if