’Ah!  You’re Commander Beauchamp; I think I know you.  I’ve seen you on a platform,’ cried a fresh-faced man in decent clothes, halting on his way along the pavement; ’and if you were in your uniform, you damned Republican dog!  I’d strip you with my own hands, for the disloyal scoundrel you are, with your pimping Republicanism and capsizing everything in a country like Old England.  It’s the cat-o’-nine-tails you want, and the bosen to lay on; and I’d do it myself.  And mind me, when next I catch sight of you in blue and gold lace, I’ll compel you to show cause why you wear it, and prove your case, or else I’ll make a Cupid of you, and no joke about it.  I don’t pay money for a nincompoop to outrage my feelings of respect and loyalty, when he’s in my pay, d’ ye hear?  You’re in my pay:  and you do your duty, or I ’ll kick ye out of it.  It’s no empty threat.  You look out for your next public speech, if it’s anywhere within forty mile of London.  Get along.’

With a scowl, and a very ugly ‘yah!’ worthy of cannibal jaws, the man passed off.

Beauchamp kept eye on him.  ‘What class does a fellow like that come of?’

‘He’s a harmless enthusiast,’ said Lydiard.  ’He has been reading the article, and has got excited over it.’

‘I wish I had the fellow’s address.’  Beauchamp looked wistfully at Lydiard, but he did not stimulate the generous offer to obtain it for him.  Perhaps it was as well to forget the fellow.

‘You see the effect of those articles,’ he said.

‘You see what I mean by unseasonable times,’ Lydiard retorted.

‘He didn’t talk like a tradesman,’ Beauchamp mused.

’He may be one, for all that.  It’s better to class him as an enthusiast.’

‘An enthusiast!’ Beauchamp stamped:  ‘for what?’

’For the existing order of things; for his beef and ale; for the titles he is accustomed to read in the papers.  You don’t study your countrymen.’

‘I’d study that fellow, if I had the chance.’

’You would probably find him one of the emptiest, with a rather worse temper than most of them.’

Beauchamp shook Lydiard’s hand, saying, ‘The widow?’

‘There’s no woman like her!’

’Well, now you’re free—­why not?  I think I put one man out of the field.’

‘Too early!  Besides—­’

‘Repeat that, and you may have to say too late.’

‘When shall you go down to Bevisham?’

’When?  I can’t tell:  when I’ve gone through fire.  There never was a home for me like the cottage, and the old man, and the dear good girl—­ the best of girls! if you hadn’t a little spoilt her with your philosophy of the two sides of the case.’

‘I’ve not given her the brains.’

’She’s always doubtful of doing, doubtful of action:  she has no will.  So she is fatalistic, and an argument between us ends in her submitting, as if she must submit to me, because I’m overbearing, instead of accepting the fact.’