‘Has there been bailing of you again, Skepsey?’

‘A good gentleman, a resident,’ he replied; ’a military gentleman; indeed, a colonel of the cavalry; but, it may so be, retired; and anxious about our vast possessions; though he thinks a translation of a French attack on England unimportant.  He says, the Germans despise us most.’

‘Then this gentleman thinks you have a good case?’

‘He is a friend of Captain Dartrey’s.’

Hearing that name, Nesta said:  ’Now, Skepsey, you must tell me everything.  You are not to mind your looks.  I believe, I do always believe you mean well.’

’Miss Nesta, it depends upon the magistrate’s not being prejudiced against the street-processionists!

‘But you may expect justice from the magistrate, if your case is good?’

’I would not say no, Miss Nesta.  But we find, the opinion of the public has its effect with magistrates—­their sentences.  They are severe on boxing.  They have latterly treated the “Army” with more consideration, owing to the change in the public view.  I myself have changed.’

‘Have you joined it?’

‘I cannot say I am a member of it.’

’You walked in the ranks to-day, and you were maltreated?  Your friend was there?’

‘I walked with Matilda Pridden; that is, parallel, along the pavement.’

‘I hope she came out of it unhurt?’

‘It is thanks to Captain Dartrey, Miss Nesta?’

This time Nesta looked her question.

Manton interposed:  ‘You are to speak, Mr. Skepsey’; and she stopped a flood of narrative, that was knocking in his mind to feel its head and to leap—­an uninterrupted half-minute more would have shaped the story for the proper flow.

He began, after attending to the throb of his bruises in a manner to correct them rather than solace; and the beginning was the end:  ’Captain Dartrey rescued us, before Matilda Pridden suffered harm, to mention—­the chin, slight, teeth unshaken; a beautiful set.  She is angry with Captain Dartrey, for having recourse to violence in her defence:  it is against her principles.  “Then you die,” she says; and our principles are to gain more by death.  She says, we are alive in them; but worse if we abandon them for the sake of living.—­I am a little confused; she is very abstruse.—­Because, that is the corruptible life, she says.  I have found it quite impossible to argue with her; she has always a complete answer; wonderful.  In case of Invasion, we are to lift our voices to the Lord; and the Lord’s will shall be manifested.  If we are robbed, we ask, How came we by the goods?  It is unreasonable; it strikes at rights of property.  But I have to go on thinking.  When in danger, she sings without excitement.  When the blow struck her, she stopped singing only an instant.  She says, no one fears, who has real faith.  She will not let me call her brave.  She cannot admire Captain Dartrey.  Her principles are opposed.  She said to him, “Sir, you did what seemed to you right.”  She thinks every blow struck sends us back to the state of the beasts.  Her principles . . .’