ees had said to me when I had attempted to be jocose about
these punctilios. I took care, however, always to put on a white
cravat both with the captain and with the officers. After dinner with
the captain, a cup of coffee was always brought in on a silver tray,
in a silver coffee-pot. This was leisurely consumed; and then, as I
soon understood, the captain expected that I should depart. I learnt
afterwards that he immediately put his feet up on the sofa and slept
for the remainder of the evening. I retired to the lieutenant's
cabin, and there discussed the whole history of Britannula over many
a prolonged cigar.

"Did you really mean to kill the old men?" said Lord Alfred Percy to
me one day; "regularly to cut their throats, you know, and carry them
out and burn them."

"I did not mean it, but the law did."

"Every poor old fellow would have been put an end to without the
slightest mercy?"

"Not without mercy," I rejoined.

"Now, there's my governor's father," said Lord Alfred; "you know who
he is?"

"The Duke of Northumberland, I'm informed."

"He's a terrible swell. He owns three castles, and half a county, and
has half a million a-year. I can hardly tell you what sort of an old
fellow he is at home. There isn't any one who doesn't pay him the
most profound respect, and he's always doing good to everybody. Do
you mean to say that some constable or cremator,--some sort of first
hangman,--would have come to him and taken him by the nape of his
neck, and cut his throat, just because he was sixty-eight years old?
I can't believe that anybody would have done it."

"But the duke is a man."

"Yes, he's a man, no doubt."

"If he committed murder, he would be hanged in spite of his dukedom."

"I don't know how that would be," said Lord Alfred, hesitating. "I
cannot imagine that my grandfather should commit a murder."

"But he would be hanged; I can tell you that. Though it be very
improbable,--impossible, as you and I may think it,--the law is the
same for him as for others. Why should not all other laws be the same
also?"

"But it would be murder."

"What is your idea of murder?"

"Killing people."

"Then you are murderers who go about with this great gun of yours for
the sake of killing many people."

"We've never killed anybody with it yet."

"You are not the less murderers if you have the intent to murder. Are
soldiers murderers who kill other soldiers in battle? The murderer is
the man who illeg