ere this afternoon. He's really
quite eccentric."

"What sort of doctrines?" the Dean inquired, with languid zeal. "Not, I
hope, irreligious?"

"Oh, dear, no," Philip answered; "not that so much. He troubles himself
very little, I think, about religion. Social doctrines, don't you know;
such very queer views--about women, and so forth."

"Indeed?" the Dean said quickly, drawing himself up very stiff: for you
touch the ark of God for the modern cleric when you touch the question
of the relations of the sexes. "And what does he say? It's highly
undesirable men should go about the country inciting to rebellion on
such fundamental points of moral order in public railway carriages."
For it is a peculiarity of minds constituted like the Dean's (say,
ninety-nine per cent. of the population) to hold that the more important
a subject is to our general happiness, the less ought we all to think
about it and discuss it.

"Why, he has very queer ideas," Philip went on, slightly hesitating; for
he shared the common vulgar inability to phrase exposition of a certain
class of subjects in any but the crudest and ugliest phraseology. "He
seems to think, don't you know, the recognised forms of vice--well, what
all young men do--you know what I mean--Of course it's not right, but
still they do them--" The Dean nodded a cautious acquiescence. "He
thinks they're horribly wrong and distressing; but he makes nothing at
all of the virtue of decent girls and the peace of families."

"If I found a man preaching that sort of doctrine to my wife or my
daughters," Monteith said savagely, "I know what _I_'d do--I'd put a
bullet through him."

"And quite right, too," the General murmured approvingly.

Professional considerations made the Dean refrain from endorsing this
open expression of murderous sentiment in its fullest form; a clergyman
ought always to keep up some decent semblance of respect for the Gospel
and the Ten Commandments--or, at least, the greater part of them. So
he placed the tips of his fingers and thumbs together in the usual
deliberative clerical way, gazed blankly through the gap, and answered
with mild and perfunctory disapprobation: "A bullet would perhaps be
an unnecessarily severe form of punishment to mete out; but I confess
I could excuse the man who was so far carried away by his righteous
indignation as to duck the fellow in the nearest horse-pond."

"Well, I don't know about that," Philip replied, with an outburs