id ones.
The book he was reading now? Oh, that (with a slight reddening of his
skin and a little awkwardness at the admission) was one of those he
liked best. It was one of the queer ones, but interesting for all that.
It was about their own people--the generations of Mount Dunstans who had
lived in the centuries past. He supposed he liked it because there were
a lot of odd stories and exciting things in it. Plenty of fighting and
adventure. There had been some splendid fellows among them. (He was
beginning to forget himself a little by this time.) They were afraid of
nothing. They were rather like savages in the earliest days, but at that
time all the rest of the world was savage. But they were brave, and
it was odd how decent they were very often. What he meant was--what
he liked was, that they were men--even when they were barbarians. You
couldn't be ashamed of them. Things they did then could not be done now,
because the world was different, but if--well, the kind of men they were
might do England a lot of good if they were alive to-day. They would be
different themselves, of course, in one way--but they must be the same
men in others. Perhaps Mr. Penzance (reddening again) understood what he
meant. He knew himself very well, because he had thought it all out, he
was always thinking about it, but he was no good at explaining.

Mr. Penzance was interested. His outlook on the past and the present had
always been that of a bookworm, but he understood enough to see that
he had come upon a temperament novel enough to awaken curiosity. The
apparently entirely neglected boy, of a type singularly unlike that of
his father and elder brother, living his life virtually alone in the big
place, and finding food to his taste in stories of those of his blood
whose dust had mingled with the earth centuries ago, provided him with a
new subject for reflection.

That had been the beginning of an unusual friendship. Gradually Penzance
had reached a clear understanding of all the building of the young life,
of its rankling humiliation, and the qualities of mind and body which
made for rebellion. It sometimes thrilled him to see in the big frame
and powerful muscles, in the strong nature and unconquerable spirit,
a revival of what had burned and stirred through lives lived in a dim,
almost mythical, past. There were legends of men with big bodies, fierce
faces, and red hair, who had done big deeds, and conquered in dark and
barbarous da