I, "that _you're_ too good to match yourself
against Farrell. The harm he's done you is atrocious--I can hardly
look you in the face, Jack, and speak about it. . . . All the same,
Jimmy talks sense: an outsider like Farrell isn't worthy of your
steel, as the writers say."

"We'll wait till he has felt it." Jack stood up, pushed his hands
into his trouser-pockets, took one turn around the room, returned,
and came to a halt on the hearth-rug. "There's another point," said
he. "You fellows can never get it out of your heads that your
thoroughbred is always, and necessarily, more sensitive than your
mongrel. _It must be so_--you don't trouble about evidence: it's
fixed in your minds _a priori_: which means that you're just as
unscientific and at least as far from the truth as I should be if I
posited the exact opposite . . . As a matter of fact, some miss in
the breeding will usually carry with it an irritable protective nerve
and keep the animal sensitive on points which the thoroughbred
ignores. Your cripple thinks of his hip, your hunchback of his
spine: your well-formed man takes his hip and spine for granted.
Your bastard is sensitive on historical fact and predisposed to lying
about it. . . . Stated thus, my counter-proposition is obvious.
You won't be so ready to agree when I go on to assure you that
sensitiveness in these mongrels and misfits often spreads from the
centre over the whole nervous system.--But, anyway, you knew my poor
hound, the pair of you. Not much breeding in Billy, eh? . . .
Well, he bit four blackguards before they laid him out: bit 'em deep,
too, and I won't answer for the virus. That dog died defending
my papers. He fought on his honour, and he knew it, Roddy.
He suffered, Jimmy--even if he was dead when they threw him into the
fire. And--I'm going to give your Farrell the benefit of the doubt.
. . . Where's the tobacco?"

I passed him the jar. "We'll allow for the moment that you are
right, Jack," said I. "At all events, you've made out a case.
But where do I come in? What's the part you propose for me in this
show? Pull yourself together and admit that I'm asking a sweetly
reasonable question."

"Didn't I explain?" Jack answered testily. "Surely I made it clear?
All I ask of you is to post me out from time to time the money I ask
for travelling expenses. . . . That doesn't compromise you, eh?
. . . Damn it all, Roddy," he exploded, "I counted you were my
friend to that e