From a pile of letters on the table he selected one written on two sheets of thin paper, and handed it to Rolfe.  The writing was bold, the style vigorous, the matter fresh and interesting.  Major Carnaby had no graces of expression; but all the more engrossing was his brief narrative of mountain warfare, declaring its truthfulness in every stroke of the pen.

‘Fine fellow!’ exclaimed Rolfe, when he had read to the end.  ’Splendid fellow!’

‘Isn’t he!  And he’s seeing life.’

‘That’s where you ought to be, my boy,’ remarked Rolfe, between puffs of tobacco.

‘I dare say.  No use thinking about it.  Too late.’

‘If I had a son,’ pursued Harvey, smiling at the hypothesis, ’I think I’d make a fighting man of him, or try to.  At all events, he should go out somewhere, and beat the big British drum, one way or another.  I believe it’s our only hope.  We’re rotting at home —­ some of us sunk in barbarism, some coddling themselves in over-refinement.  What’s the use of preaching peace and civilisation, when we know that England’s just beginning her big fight —­ the fight that will put all history into the shade!  We have to lead the world; it’s our destiny; and we must do it by breaking heads.  That’s the nature of the human animal, and will be for ages to come.’

Carnaby nodded assent.

‘If we were all like your brother,’ Rolfe went on.  ’I’m glad he’s fighting in India, and not in Africa.  I can’t love the buccaneering shopkeeper, the whisky-distiller with a rifle —­ ugh!’

’I hate that kind of thing.  The gold grubbers and diamond bagmen!  But it’s part of the march onward.  We must have money, you know.’

The speaker’s forehead wrinkled, and again he moved uneasily.  Rolfe regarded him with a reflective air.

‘That man you saw here tonight,’ Carnaby went on, ’the short, thick fellow —­ his name is Dando —­ he’s just come back from Queensland.  I don’t quite know what he’s been doing, but he evidently knows a good deal about mines.  He says he has invented a new process for getting gold out of ore —­ I don’t know anything about it.  In the early days of mining, he says, no end of valuable stuff was abandoned, because they couldn’t smelt it.  Something about pyrites —­ I have a vague recollection of old chemistry lessons.  Dando wants to start smelting works for his new process, somewhere in North Queensland.’

‘And wants money, I dare say,’ remarked the listener, with a twinkle of the eye.

’I suppose so.  It was Carton that brought him here for the first time, a week ago. Might be worth thinking about, you know.’

’I have no opinion.  My profound ignorance of everything keeps me in a state of perpetual scepticism.  It has its advantages, I dare say.’

‘You’re very conservative, Rolfe, in your finance.’

‘Very.’

‘Quite right, no doubt.  Could you join us at Nice or some such place?’