eplied the
other. "I count on doing some good there--it is time!" A bitter and
pathetic smile showed for a second on his lips. "It won't be my fault if
I fail. You are English, Sir?"

Shelton nodded.

"Forgive my asking; your voice lacks something I've nearly always noticed
in the English a kind of--'comment cela s'appelle'--cocksureness, coming
from your nation's greatest quality."

"And what is that?" asked Shelton with a smile.

"Complacency," replied the youthful foreigner.

"Complacency!" repeated Shelton; "do you call that a great quality?"

"I should rather say, monsieur, a great defect in what is always a great
people. You are certainly the most highly-civilised nation on the earth;
you suffer a little from the fact. If I were an English preacher my
desire would be to prick the heart of your complacency."

Shelton, leaning back, considered this impertinent suggestion.

"Hum!" he said at last, "you'd be unpopular; I don't know that we're any
cockier than other nations."

The young foreigner made a sign as though confirming this opinion.

"In effect," said he, "it is a sufficiently widespread disease. Look at
these people here"--and with a rapid glance he pointed to the inmates of
the carnage,--"very average persons! What have they done to warrant
their making a virtuous nose at those who do not walk as they do? That
old rustic, perhaps, is different--he never thinks at all--but look at
those two occupied with their stupidities about the price of hops, the
prospects of potatoes, what George is doing, a thousand things all of
that sort--look at their faces; I come of the bourgeoisie myself--have
they ever shown proof of any quality that gives them the right to pat
themselves upon the back? No fear! Outside potatoes they know nothing,
and what they do not understand they dread and they despise--there are
millions of that breed. 'Voila la Societe'! The sole quality these
people have shown they have is cowardice. I was educated by the
Jesuits," he concluded; "it has given me a way of thinking."

Under ordinary circumstances Shelton would have murmured in a well-bred
voice, "Ah! quite so," and taken refuge in the columns of the Daily
Telegraph. In place of this, for some reason that he did not understand,
he looked at the young foreigner, and asked,

"Why do you say all this to me?"

The tramp--for by his boots he could hardly have been better--hesitated.

"When you've travelled like me,"