nking of something Denis Drummond, Gerald Drummond's elder
brother, said of her Ladyship. Ah, poor Denis! He'd face a charge of the
guns more readily than he would her Ladyship. Odd, isn't it, Mary, how
those thoroughly disagreeable women can make themselves feared?"

CHAPTER V

"OLD BLOOD AND THUNDER"

Sir Denis Drummond had been his brother Gerald's senior by some seven or
eight years. He, too, was a soldier, and had inherited the baronetcy
from his father, upon whom the title had been bestowed by a grateful
country for services in the field. A second baronetcy in the family had
been specially created for Sir Gerald. It would not have been easy to
say which was the finer soldier of the two brothers; for while Sir
Gerald had made his name famous by the most dare-devil and brilliant
feats, Sir Denis was rather the old type of soldier--cool as well as
daring, always reliable and steady. Worshipped by his men, his name was
one to be held in constant regard by the British public, which calls its
heroes by their Christian names abbreviated, if they do not happen,
indeed, to have a nickname for them.

"Old Blood and Thunder" was the name by which Sir Denis was known to his
men, and that from a certain violence of speech of which he had never
been able, or perhaps had never desired, to divest himself. This
violence had somewhat annoyed his brother Gerald, who could get as much
exhortation out of a verse of Scripture as ever he needed. Sir Denis,
like many old soldiers, was quite a devout man in his way; but he had
none of the zealot passion of his younger brother. The hidden fires
which had given Sir Gerald a certain haggardness of aspect, as though a
sculptor had hewed him roughly in marble, had never burned in Sir
Denis's breast. He was a red-faced, white-moustached veteran, as
blustering as the west wind, but with a heart as soft as wax in the
hands of his daughter Nelly, and, indeed, in the hands of anyone else
who knew the way to it.

His servants adored him, as did the dogs and all animals and children.
He was beautiful in his manner to women of high and low degree, with
perhaps one exception. He was as simple as a child, and loved the
popular applause which fell to him whenever he made any kind of public
appearance, for he had been so long a Londoner that now the London crowd
knew him and had a sense of possession in him. His rosy face would beam
all over when the crowd shouted itself hoarse for "Old Blood