is perfectly clear consciousness that, come what would, he had
to write.

As we walked back to Bath he told me his 'Ruined Hall' story as far as
it had yet evolved itself in his brain, and we were still discussing it
when in Milsom Street we met a boy crying evening papers, and details of
the last great battle at Saspataras Hill.

Derrick broke off hastily, everything but anxiety for Lawrence driven
from his mind.

Chapter VI.

"Say not, O Soul, thou art defeated,
Because thou art distressed;
If thou of better thing art cheated,
Thou canst not be of best."
T. T. Lynch.

"Good heavens, Sydney!" he exclaimed in great excitement and with his
whole face aglow with pleasure, "look here!"

He pointed to a few lines in the paper which mentioned the heroic
conduct of Lieutenant L. Vaughan, who at the risk of his life had
rescued a brother officer when surrounded by the enemy and completely
disabled. Lieutenant Vaughan had managed to mount the wounded man on his
own horse and had miraculously escaped himself with nothing worse than a
sword-thrust in the left arm.

We went home in triumph to the Major, and Derrick read the whole account
aloud. With all his detestation of war, he was nevertheless greatly
stirred by the description of the gallant defence of the attacked
position--and for a time we were all at one, and could talk of nothing
but Lawrence's heroism, and Victoria Crosses, and the prospects of
peace. However, all too soon, the Major's fiendish temper returned,
and he began to use the event of the day as a weapon against Derrick,
continually taunting him with the contrast between his stay-at-home life
of scribbling and Lawrence's life of heroic adventure. I could never
make out whether he wanted to goad his son into leaving him, in order
that he might drink himself to death in peace, or whether he merely
indulged in his natural love of tormenting, valuing Derrick's devotion
as conducive to his own comfort, and knowing that hard words would not
drive him from what he deemed to be his duty. I rather incline to the
latter view, but the old Major was always an enigma to me; nor can I
to this day make out his raison-d'etre, except on the theory that the
training of a novelist required a course of slow torture, and that the
old man was sent into the world to be a sort of thorn in the flesh of
Derrick.

What with the disappointment about his first book, an