mes
he's credited with in history. You remember, it was he who was employed
in massacring the poor savage Zulus in their last stand at bay, and in
driving the Afghan women and children to die of cold and starvation on
the mountain-tops after the taking of Kabul. A terrible fighter, indeed!
A terrible history!"

"But I believe he's a very good man in private life," Frida put in
apologetically, feeling compelled to say the best she could for her
husband's guest. "I don't care for him much myself, to be sure, but
Robert likes him. And he's awfully nice, every one says, to his wife and
step-children."

"How CAN he be very good," Bertram answered in his gentlest voice, "if
he hires himself out indiscriminately to kill or maim whoever he's told
to, irrespective even of the rights and wrongs of the private or public
quarrel he happens to be employed upon? It's an appalling thing to take
a fellow-creature's life, even if you're quite, quite sure it's just and
necessary; but fancy contracting to take anybody's and everybody's life
you're told to, without any chance even of inquiring whether they may
not be in the right after all, and your own particular king or people
most unjust and cruel and blood-stained aggressors? Why, it's horrible
to contemplate. Do you know, Mrs. Monteith," he went on, with his
far-away air, "it's that that makes society here in England so difficult
to me. It's so hard to mix on equal terms with your paid high priests
and your hired slaughterers, and never display openly the feelings you
entertain towards them. Fancy if you had to mix so yourself with the men
who flogged women to death in Hungary, or with the governors and jailors
of some Siberian prison! That's the worst of travel. When I was in
Central Africa, I sometimes saw a poor black woman tortured or killed
before my very eyes; and if I'd tried to interfere in her favour, to
save or protect her, I'd only have got killed myself, and probably have
made things all the worse in the end for her. And yet it's hard indeed
to have to look on at, or listen to, such horrors as these without
openly displaying one's disgust and disapprobation. Whenever I meet your
famous generals, or your judges and your bishops, I burn to tell them
how their acts affect me; yet I'm obliged to refrain, because I know
my words could do no good and might do harm, for they could only anger
them. My sole hope of doing anything to mitigate the rigour of your
cruel customs is to