auditors. It was
the spark to the gun-powder of their passions. Their affectations
vanished in a trice.

"Service, yes, but honourable! Use that lie again, Mr. Lance, and I
will ram the butt of it down your throat!" cried Major Chantrell. He
leaned forward over the table in a blaze of fury. Yet his face did no
more than match the faces of his comrades.

Mitchelbourne began to understand. These simple soldier-men had
endeavoured to conduct their proceedings with great dignity and a
judicial calmness; they had mapped out for themselves certain parts
which they were to play as upon a stage; they were to be three stern
imposing figures of justice; and so they had become simply absurd and
ridiculous. Now, however, that passion had the upper hand of them,
Mitchelbourne saw at once that he stood in deadly peril. These were
men.

"Understand me, Mr. Lance," and the Major's voice rang out firm, the
voice of a man accustomed to obedience. "Three years ago I was in
command of Devil's Drop, a little makeshift fort upon the sands
outside Tangier. In front the Moors lay about us in a semicircle. Sir,
the diameter was the line of the sea at our backs. We could not retire
six yards without wetting our feet, not twenty without drowning. One
night the Moors pushed their trenches up to our palisades; in the dusk
of the morning I ordered a sortie. Nine officers went out with me and
three came back, we three. Of the six we left behind, five fell, by my
orders, to be sure, for I led them out; but, by the living God, you
killed them. There's the pistol that shot my best friend down, an
English pistol. There's the powder flask which charged the pistol, an
English flask filled with English powder. And who sold the pistol and
the powder to the Moors, England's enemies? You, an Englishman. But
you have come to the end of your lane to-night. Turn and turn as you
will you have come to the end of it."

The truth was out now, and Mitchelbourne was chilled with
apprehension. Here were three men very desperately set upon what they
considered a mere act of justice. How was he to dissuade them? By
argument? They would not listen to it. By proofs? He had none to offer
them. By excuses? Of all unsupported excuses which can match for
futility the excuse of mistaken identity? It springs immediate to the
criminal's lips. Its mere utterance is almost a conviction.

"You persist in error, Major Chantrell," he nevertheless began.

"Show him the proof, Ba