a many such as you to put
me out."

"Did he say so? Really now!" And Mr. Ridgett looked at Dale
critically. "I take it he was a heavyweight, eh?"

"He gave me my work," said Dale; "and I was all three minutes at it.
But _out_ he went."

"Really now!" and Mr. Ridgett smiled.

"I had stopped Miss Yorke from operating. And I started her again
within four minutes. That was the time, and no more, the message was
delayed. That was the time it took me to renew the service with the
confidence and secrecy provided by Her Majesty's Regulations. And I
ask you, how else could I have acted? Was I to allow a telegram
consigned to my care to be blabbed out word for word to all the
world?"

"Were there many people in the office just then?"

"Two. But that makes no difference. If it had been only one--or half a
one--it couldn't be permitted."

"And was the message itself of a particularly private or important
nature?"

"Not as it happens. But the principle was the same."

"Just so."

As it appeared from Dale's narration, the soldier was at first willing
to accept his licking in a sportsmanlike spirit, was indeed quite
ready to admit that he had been the offending party; but injudicious
friends--secret enemies of Dale perhaps--had egged him on to take out
a summons for assault. When, however, Dale appeared before the
magistrates, the soldier had changed his mind again--he did not
appear, he allowed the charge to fall to the ground. And there the
matter might have ended, ought to have ended, but for the fact that
the local Member of Parliament suddenly made a ridiculous fuss--said
it was a monstrous and intolerable state of affairs that soldiers of
the Queen should be knocked about by her civil servants--wrote letters
to other Members of Parliament, to Government secretaries, to
newspapers. Then the excitement that had been smoldering burst forth
with explosive force, shaking the village, the county, the universe.

Dale, at handy grips with his superior officers, stood firm, declined
to budge an inch from his position; he was right, and nothing would
ever make him say he was wrong.

"Ah, well," said Mr. Ridgett, "if that's the way you looked at it. But
I don't quite follow how it got lifted out of their hands at Rodhaven,
and brought before _us_."

"I demanded it," said Dale proudly. "I wasn't going to be messed about
any further by a pack of funking old women--for that's what they are,
at Rodhaven. And I wasn't going