nails into his own coffin. He did it, too, after
I'd insulted him and we'd had a row."

"Oh, that's nothing. To a fellow like him that sort of thing comes
easy."

"It wouldn't come easy to me, by Jove!"

"Then it would be all the more to your credit, if you ever did anything
of the kind."

The Englishman bounded away. Once more he began to pace the floor
restlessly. The old man took his pipe from a tray, and his
tobacco-pouch from a drawer. Having filled the bowl, with meditative
leisure he looked round for a match. "Got a light?"

Ashley struck a vesta on the edge of his match-box and applied it to the
old man's pipe.

"Should you say," he asked, while doing it, "that I ought to attempt
anything in that line?"

"Certainly not--unless you want to--to get ahead."

"I don't want to stay behind."

"Then, it's for you to judge, my son."

There was something like an affectionate stress on the two concluding
monosyllables. Ashley backed off, out of the lamplight.

"It's this way," he explained, stammeringly; "I'm a British officer and
gentleman. I'm a little more than that--since I'm a V.C. man--and a
fellow--dash it all, I might as well say it!--I'm a fellow they've got
their eye on--in the line of high office, don't you know? And I can't--I
simply _can't_--let a chap like that make me a present of all his
chances--"

"Did he have any?"

Ashley hesitated. "Before God, sir, I don't know--but I'm inclined to
think--he had. If so, I suppose they're of as much value to him as mine
to me."

"But not of any more."

He hesitated again. "I don't know about that. Perhaps they are. The Lord
knows I don't say that lightly, for mine are--Well, we needn't go into
that. But I've got a good deal in my life, and I don't imagine that he,
poor devil--"

"Oh, don't worry. A rich soil is never barren. When nothing is planted
in it, Nature uses it for flowers."

Ashley answered restively. "I see, sir, your sympathies are all on his
side."

"Not at all. Quite the contrary. My certainties are on his side. My
sympathies are on yours."

"Because you think I need them."

"Because I think you may."

"In case I--"

"In case you should condemn yourself in the thing you're going to
allow."

"But what's it to be?"

"That's for you to settle with yourself."

He was silent a minute. When he spoke it was with some conviction. "I
should like to do the right thing, by Jove!--the straight thing--if I
only knew what it was."