wrong and distressing; but he makes nothing at all of the virtue of
decent girls and the peace of families."

"If I found a man preaching that sort of doctrine to my wife or my
daughters," Monteith said savagely, "I know what _I_'d do--I'd put
a bullet through him."

"And quite right, too," the General murmured approvingly.

Professional considerations made the Dean refrain from endorsing
this open expression of murderous sentiment in its fullest form; a
clergyman ought always to keep up some decent semblance of respect
for the Gospel and the Ten Commandments--or, at least, the greater
part of them. So he placed the tips of his fingers and thumbs
together in the usual deliberative clerical way, gazed blankly
through the gap, and answered with mild and perfunctory
disapprobation: "A bullet would perhaps be an unnecessarily severe
form of punishment to mete out; but I confess I could excuse the
man who was so far carried away by his righteous indignation as to
duck the fellow in the nearest horse-pond."

"Well, I don't know about that," Philip replied, with an outburst
of unwonted courage and originality; for he was beginning to like,
and he had always from the first respected, Bertram. "There's
something about the man that makes me feel--even when I differ from
him most--that he believes it all, and is thoroughly in earnest.
I dare say I'm wrong, but I always have a notion he's a better man
than me, in spite of all his nonsense,--higher and clearer and
differently constituted,--and that if only I could climb to just
where he has got, perhaps I should see things in the same light