of avoiding disagreeable personal
consequences by timely compromises or judicious employment of delegates.
He had generally found his fellow-men ready to meet him reasonably as an
equal or a superior.

But now he must be prepared to see in everyone he met a possible enemy,
who would hand him over to the tyrant on the faintest suspicion. They
were spies to be baffled or disarmed, pursuers to be eluded. The
smallest slip in his account of himself would be enough to undo him.

No wonder that, as he thought over all this, his heart quailed within
him.

They say--the paradox-mongers say--that it requires a far higher degree
of moral courage for a soldier in action to leave the ranks under fire
and seek a less distinguished position towards the rear, than would
carry him on with the rest to charge a battery.

This may be true, though it might not prove a very valuable defence at a
court-martial; but, at all events, Mr. Bultitude found, when it came to
the point, that it was almost impossible for him to screw up his courage
to run away.

It is not a pleasant state, this indecision whether to stay passively
and risk the worst or avoid it by flight, and the worst of it is that,
whatever course is eventually forced upon us, it finds us equally
unprepared, and more liable from such indecision to bungle miserably in
the sequel.

Paul might never have gained heart to venture, but for an unpleasant
incident that took place during dinner and a discovery he made after it.

They happened to have a particularly unpopular pudding that day; a
pallid preparation of suet, with an infrequent currant or two embalmed
in it, and Paul was staring at his portion of this delicacy
disconsolately enough, wondering how he should contrive to consume and,
worse still, digest it, when his attention was caught by Jolland, who
sat directly opposite him.

That young gentleman, who evidently shared the general prejudice against
the currant pudding, was inviting Mr. Bultitude's attention to a little
contrivance of his own for getting rid of it, which consisted in
delicately shovelling the greater part of what was on his plate into a
large envelope held below the table to receive it.

This struck Paul as a heaven-sent method of avoiding the difficulty, and
he had just got the envelope which had held Barbara's letter out of his
pocket, intending to follow Jolland's example, when the Doctor's voice
made him start guiltily and replace the envelope in h