of their inner consciousness, alias their
ignorance, will tell you that in the intervals of war and danger, peace
and tranquil life acquire their true value and satisfy the heroic mind.
But those who look before they babble or scribble will see and say
that men who risk their lives habitually thirst for exciting pleasures
between the acts of danger, are not for innocent tranquility.

To this Denys was no exception. His whole military life had been
half sparta, half Capua. And he was too good a soldier and too good a
libertine to have ever mixed either habit with the other. But now for
the first time he found himself mixed; at peace and yet on duty; for
he took this latter view of his wild goose chase, luckily. So all these
months he was a demi-Spartan; sober, prudent, vigilant, indomitable; and
happy, though constantly disappointed, as might have been expected. He
flirted gigantically on the road; but wasted no time about it. Nor in
these his wanderings did he tell a single female that "marriage was not
one of his habits, etc."

And so we leave him on the tramp, "Pilgrim of Friendship," as his poor
comrade was of Love.

CHAPTER XLVIII

Catherine was in dismay when she reflected that Gerard must reach home
in another month at farthest, more likely in a week; and how should she
tell him she had not even kept an eye upon his betrothed? Then there was
the uncertainty as to the girl's fate; and this uncertainty sometimes
took a sickening form.

"Oh, Kate," she groaned, "if she should have gone and made herself
away!"

"Mother, she would never be so wicked."

"Ah, my lass, you know not what hasty fools young lasses be, that have
no mothers to keep 'em straight. They will fling themselves into the
water for a man that the next man they meet would ha' cured 'em of in a
week. I have known 'em to jump in like brass one moment and scream for
help in the next. Couldn't know their own minds ye see even about such
a trifle as yon. And then there's times when their bodies ail like no
other living creatures ever I could hear of, and that strings up their
feelings so, the patience, that belongs to them at other times beyond
all living souls barring an ass, seems all to jump out of 'em at
one turn, and into the water they go. Therefore, I say that men are
monsters."

"Mother!"

"Monsters, and no less, to go making such heaps o' canals just to tempt
the poor women in. They know we shall not cut our throats, hating the
sig