“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 to have it hushed over—­nor write any such letter as they asked.”

“Oh, they suggested—­”

“They suggested,” said Dale, swelling with indignation, “that I should write regret that I had perhaps acted indiscreet but only through over-zeal.”

“Oh!  And you didn’t see your way to—­”

“Not me.  Take a black mark, and let my record go.  No, thank you.  I sent up my formal request to be heard at headquarters.  I appealed to Caesar.”

Mr. Ridgett smiled good-naturedly.  “Why, you’re quite a classical scholar, Mr. Dale.  You have your Latin quotations all pat.”

“I’m a self-educated man,” said Dale.  “I begun at the bottom, and I’ve been trying to improve myself all the way to where I’ve risen to.”

Once or twice he sought tentatively to obtain from Mr. Ridgett the moral support that even the strongest people derive from being assured that they are entirely in the right.  But Mr. Ridgett, who had been sympathetic from the moment of his arrival, and who throughout the hours had been becoming more and more friendly, did not entirely respond to these hinted invitations.

“If you tell me to speak frankly,” he said at last, “I should have a doubt that you’ve made this one false step.  You haven’t kept everything in proportion.”