“Yes,” said Captain Delorme, as the stricken man fell, “if he parries outward the point goes under, if he anticipates a feint it comes straight in, and if he parries a lunge-and-feint-under, he gets feint-over before he can come up.  I have never seen Stukeley miss when once he rests on the hilt. Exit de Warrenne—­and Hell the worse for it——­” and the boy awoke.

He kissed the sword and fell asleep again.

One day, when receiving his morning fencing and boxing lessons of Sergeant Havlan, he astonished that warrior (and made a bitter enemy of him) by warning him against allowing his blade to rest on the Sergeant’s hilt, and by hitting him clean and fair whenever it was allowed to happen.  Also, by talking of “the Italian school of fence” and of “invitations”—­the which were wholly outside the fencing-philosophy of the French-trained swordsman.  At the age of fifteen the boy was too good for the man who had been the best that Aldershot had known, who had run a salle d’armes for years, and who was much sought by ambitious members of the Sword Club.

The Sword, from the day of that newly vivid dream, became to the boy what his Symbol is to the religious fanatic, and he was content to sit and stare at it, musing, for hours.

The sad-eyed, sentimental lady encouraged him and spoke of Knights, Chivalry, Honour, Noblesse Oblige, and Ideals such as the nineteenth century knew not and the world will never know again.

“Be a real and true Knight, sonny darling,” she would say, “and live to help.  Help women—­God knows they need it.  And try to be able to say at the end of your life, ‘I have never made a woman weep’.  Yes—­be a Knight and have ‘Live pure, Speak true, Right wrong’ on your shield.  Be a Round Table Knight and ride through the world bravely.  Your dear Father was a great swordsman.  You may have the sword down and kiss it, the first thing every morning—­and you must salute it every night as you go up to bed.  You shall wear a sword some day.”

(Could the poor lady but have foreseen!)

She also gave him over-copiously and over-early of her simple, fervent, vague Theology, and much Old and New Testament History, with the highest and noblest intentions—­and succeeded in implanting a deep distrust and dislike of “God” in his acutely intelligent mind.

To a prattling baby, Mother should be God enough—­God and all the angels and paradise in one ... (but he had never known a mother and Nurse Beaton had ever been more faithfully conscientious in deed than tenderly loving in manner).

She filled his soul with questionings and his mouth with questions which she could not answer, and which he answered for himself.  The questions sometimes appalled her.

If God so loved the world, why did He let the Devil loose in it?

If God could do anything, why didn’t He lay the Devil out with one hand?