e of the seemingly overpowering evidence which
they produced against him--that the charges _were_ false?"

McCalloway put the question slowly. "May I ask upon what you base your
opinion? You know all they said of him: personal dishonesty and even
ugly immorality?"

CHAPTER V

The one-time cavalry leader caught up the challenge of the question.

"Upon what do I base my opinion, sir? I base it upon all the experience
of my life and all my conceptions of personal honour. For such a man as
Dinwiddie had proven himself to be under a score of reliable tests, the
thing was a sheer impossibility. It was a contradiction in the terms of
nature. His was the soul of a Knight, sir! Such a man could not cheat
and steal and delight in low vices."

"Yet," came the somewhat dubious observation, "even Arthur's table had
its caitiff knights, if you remember."

The Kentuckian's exclamation was almost a snort. "Dinwiddie was no such
renegade," he protested. "At least I can't believe it. Glance at his
record, man! The son of an Edinburgh tradesman, who forced his way up
from the ranks to pre-eminence. He did it, too, in an army where caste
and birth defend their messes against invasion, and, as he came from the
ranks to a commission, so he went on to the head. There must have been a
greatness of soul there that could hardly care to wallow in
viciousness." As Prince paused, a spasm of emotion twitched the lips of
his host, and McCalloway's pipe died in fingers that clutched hard upon
its stem.

But because McCalloway sat unmoving, making no comment of any sort, the
Kentuckian continued. It was as though he must have his argument
acknowledged.

"I can see the tradesman's son, Sir Hector Dinwiddie, D.S.O., K.C.B.,
Major General, Aide de Camp to the Queen, promising Britain another
glorious name--but as God in heaven is my judge, I cannot see him
soiling his character, or degrading the uniform he wore!"

A moment of dead silence hung heavily between the walls of the room.
Boone Wellver saw Victor McCalloway pass an uncertain hand across his
eyes, and move his lips without speech, and then he heard Prince demand
almost impatiently,

"But you say you have served in the British Army. Surely you do not
believe that he was guilty?"

McCalloway, called out of his detached quiet by a direct question,
raised his head and nodded it in a fashion of heavy inertia.

"General Prince," he replied with an effort, "there are two reasons w