of them in a corner--with a
small headline of `Border War.' It's the Border Wars which keep the
Empire together, let me tell you, sir--the Border Wars which entail the
most self-sacrificing and thankless work. There's no honour and glory
about them. The people you are fighting for don't even take the trouble
to find out where you are, or what the trouble is about. Not that there
ought to be any hardship about that to the true soldier. He fights for
his King! That is enough for him!"

A curious softening of expression came over the fierce old face as he
spoke the last sentence. The young people both noticed it, and dimly
suspected a deeper meaning to the words, but they were in no mood for
moralising.

"I should prefer the honour and glory," Jill declared boldly. "I'd hate
to be sent to fight savages in pokey out-of-the-way places where nobody
was watching and saying, `England expects!' I could be most
terrifically brave, if I knew it would be in the papers in the morning,
and I should be a hero when I got home; but I'd be scared to death up
among great lonely mountains with the feeling that nobody cared. Were
you ever frightened, General Digby?"

"Soldiers are never frightened. You are only a girl," interrupted Jack
indignantly, but his host did not agree with his conclusions.

"She may be a girl, but she knows what she is talking about. She
understands, because she is a girl, perhaps. Women have that faculty
born in them. Banners and flags, and bands playing patriotic airs, and
the feeling that the world is watching, have an inspiring effect on the
most timid of men. Who told you that a soldier was never afraid, young
sir? Whoever it was did not know what he was talking about. Yes, I
have been afraid, deadly afraid, many times over, and no man dared to
call Terence Digby a coward. To camp with a handful of men among the
great lonely mountains, as your sister so aptly puts it, never knowing
when or how the attack may fall--an attack of devils rather than men; to
know that if you are taken torture will be your portion, not death,--
there is nothing to dread in dying for one's country,--that shakes the
nerves of the strongest man! I hear people talking about modern
warfare, and saying it is the hardest trial of bravery to fight an
unseen foe three or four miles away. Well, well! I wonder if they have
ever seen a rush of one of those warlike hill-tribes, and stood waiting
to receive it as I have h