rs of new
colonies are mostly theirs. They die of thirst in "the never never
country," under a tree, leaving their initials cut in its trunk; they
fall by hundreds in our wars. They are born leaders where acumen and
craft are not needed. Large game was made for them, and they for it.
They are the vermin destroyers of the universe. They throw life from
them with both hands, they play the game of life with a levity which
they never showed in the business of cricket and football.

They are essentially not of the stuff of which those dull persons, the
thinkers, the politicians, the educationalists, are made. No profession
knows them except the army. They have no opinions worth hearing. Only
the women who are to marry them listen to them. They are sometimes
squeezed into Parliament and are borne with there like children. About
one in a hundred of them can earn his own living, and then it is as a
land agent.

They make adorable country squires, and picturesque, simple-minded,
painstaking men of rank. They know by a sort of hereditary instinct how
to deal with a labouring man, and a horse, and how to break in a dog.
They give themselves no airs. We have _millions_ of men like this, and
it is doubtful whether the nation finds much use for them, except at
coronations, where they look beautiful; or on county councils, where
they can hold an opinion without the preliminary fatigue of forming it;
and on the bloodstained fringes of our empire, where they serenely meet
their dreadful deaths.

In the ranks of that vast army I descry Michael, and I wonder what it is
in him that makes me able to descry him at all. He is like thousands of
other men. In what is he unlike?

I think it must be something in his expression. Of many ugly men it has
been said with truth that one never observes their ugliness. Something
in the character redeems it. With Michael's undeniable good looks it was
the same. One did not notice them. They were not admired, except,
possibly, for the first moment, or across a room. His rather
insignificant grey eyes were the only thing one remembered him by, the
only part of him which seemed to represent him.

It was as if out of the narrow window of a fortress _our friend_ for a
moment looked out; that "friend of our infinite dreams" who in dreams,
but, alas! never by day, comes softly to us across the white fields of
youth; who, later on, in dreams but never by day, overtakes us with
unbearable happiness in his ha