“Ah, but we’re speaking of India, Mr. Shalders.”

“You are presuming to speak of an act of insubordination committed by a military officer under civilian command.”

“What if we find an influential prince engaged in conspiracy?”

“We look for proof.”

“Suppose we have good proof?”

“We summon him to exonerate himself.”

“No; we mount and ride straight away into his territory, spot the treason, deport him, and rule in his place!”

It was all very well for Mr. Shalders to say he talked to boys; he was cornered again, as his shrug confessed.

The boys asked among themselves whether he would have taken the same view if his Murat had done it!

These illogical boys fought for Matey Weyburn in their defence of Lord Ormont.  Somewhere, they wee sure, old Matey was hammering to the same end—­they could hear him.  Thought of him inspired them to unwonted argumentative energy, that they might support his cause; and scatter the gloomy prediction of the school, as going to the dogs now Matey had left.

The subject provoked everywhere in Great Britain a division similar to that between master and boys at Cuper’s establishment:  one party for our modern English magisterial methods with Indians, the other for the decisive Oriental at the early time, to suit their native tastes; and the Book of the Law is to be conciliatingly addressed to their sentiments by a benign civilizing Power, or the sword is out smartly at the hint of a warning to protect the sword’s conquests.  Under one aspect we appear potteringly European; under another, drunk of the East.

Lord Ormont’s ride at the head of two hundred horsemen across a stretch of country including hill and forest, to fall like a bolt from the blue on the suspected Prince in the midst of his gathering warriors, was a handsome piece of daring, and the high-handed treatment of the Prince was held by his advocates to be justified by the provocation, and the result.  He scattered an unprepared body of many hundreds, who might have enveloped him, and who would presumptively have stood their ground, had they not taken his handful to be the advance of regiments.  These are the deeds that win empires! the argument in his favour ran.  Are they of a character to maintain empires? the counter-question was urged.  Men of a deliberative aspect were not wanting in approval of the sharp and summary of the sword in air when we have to deal with Indians.  They chose to regard it as a matter of the dealing with Indians, and put aside the question of the contempt of civil authority.

Counting the cries, Lord Ormont won his case.  Festival aldermen, smoking clubmen, buckskin squires, obsequious yet privately excitable tradesmen, sedentary coachmen and cabmen, of Viking descent, were set to think like boys about him:  and the boys, the women, and the poets formed a tipsy chorea.  Journalists, on the whole, were fairly halved, as regarded numbers.  In relation to weight, they were with the burgess and the presbyter; they preponderated heavily in the direction of England’s burgess view of all cases disputed between civilian and soldier.  But that was when the peril was over.