anche Challoner was very young and much in love, she ventured
a smiling rebuke.

"You shouldn't wish to remember them; I'm afraid, Bertram, there's a
melancholy strain in you, and I don't mean to let you indulge in it.
Besides, how could you have had bad hours? You have been made much of
and given everything you could wish for since you were a boy. Indeed,
I sometimes wonder how you escaped from being spoiled."

"When I joined it, I hated the army; that sounds like high treason,
doesn't it? However, I got used to things and made art my hobby
instead of my vocation. You won't mind if I confess that a view of
this kind makes me long to paint?"

"Oh! no; I intend to encourage you. You mustn't waste your talent.
When we stay among the Rockies we will spend the days in the most
beautiful places we can find and I shall take my pleasure in watching
you at work. But didn't your fondness for sketching amuse the mess?"

"I used to be chaffed about it and repaid my tormentors by caricaturing
them. On the whole, they were very good-natured."

"I expect they admired the drawings; they ought to have done. You have
talent. Indeed, I never quite understood why you became a soldier."

"I think it was from a want of moral courage; you have seen that
determination is not among my virtues," Challoner replied. "It's as
much to the purpose that you don't know my father very well. Though
he's fond of pictures, he looks upon artists and poets as a rather
effeminate and irresponsible set, and I must own that he has met one or
two unfavourable specimens. Then he couldn't imagine the possibility
of a son of his not being anxious to follow the family profession, and,
knowing how my defection would grieve him, I let him have his way.
There has always been a Challoner fighting or ruling in India since
John Company's time."

"They must have been fine men by their portraits. There's one of a
Major Henry Challoner I fell in love with. He was with Outram, wasn't
he? You have his look, though there's a puzzling difference. I think
these men were bluffer and blunter than you are. You're gentler and
more sensitive; in a way, finer drawn."

"My sensitiveness has not been a blessing," said Challoner soberly.

"But it makes you lovable," Blanche declared. "There must have been a
certain ruthlessness about those old Challoners which you couldn't
show. After all, their pictures suggest that their courage was of the
unimaginative, ph