he day before I went, Guy called me into
his study.

"Frank," he said, "I am in a great strait of perplexity; my uncle has
been attacking me this morning about Isabel and Charley. Bruce puts him
up to it, of course."

"I thought it would come; but why on earth did not Bruce speak to you,
if not to Forrester, himself? Perhaps it was from delicacy, though. Let
us hope so."

"How philanthropic we are!" Guy retorted. "I don't believe any other man
would have spoken of delicacy and that rough-hewn log of Scotch-fir in
the same breath. My dear boy, the thing is as simple as possible--the
man is a coward. He is as careful of that precious person of his as if
it were worth preserving, so he shoots his arrows from behind Uncle
Henry's Telamonian shield. Nothing is so acute and right-judging as the
instinct of fear. He knows that if he had a fancy for a quarrel, either
Charley or I would be too happy to indulge him."

"He can't be such a dastard," I said.

"I am sure of it; but he is not the less dangerous for that. Such men
are always the most unscrupulous in revenge. I have seen murder in his
eyes a score of times in the last fortnight. If our lines had fallen in
the pleasant Italian places, he would have invested twenty scudi long
ago in hiring a dagger. As it is, civilization and the rural police
stand our friends; but I have strongly advised Charley not to trust
himself near him in cover. By G--d, I think, for once in his life, he
would hold straight!"

"You don't like him, that's evident."

The pupils of Livingstone's eyes contracted ominously; a lurid flash
shot out from under his black, bent brows, and there came on his lip
that peculiar smile that we fancy on the face of Homeric heroes--more
fell, and cruel, and terrible than even their own frown--just before
they leveled the spear. He laid his broad hand, corded across with a
net-work of tangled sinews, on the table before him, and the stout oak
creaked and trembled.

"If I were to strangle him," he said, "as I constantly feel tempted to
do, I believe I should deserve well of the state. But, with all that, I
don't like plotting against him under my own roof; it strikes me that is
a phase of hospitality not strictly Arabian. My mother laments over him
already as hardly dealt with. Then Uncle Henry is a great difficulty. He
is not in the least one of the light comedy fathers who, during two
acts, stamps about with many strange oaths and stormy denials, but in
t