"They'll clip my ears like a dog, they'll chain me up, and give me bones to gnaw. It isn't as if I had a good character. A man with a good character can get drunk whenever he likes, smash things, punch people's heads, have a good time; but me—I'm the Blackguard, so if I look crossways at the Colonel's tent it's mutiny."
"Ha, ha!—how I'd like to see you gnawing bones!"
"I'll kiss you unless you're civil."
"You daren't!"
"Eh?" The Blackguard sprang up as she fled like the wind before him along the edge of the cliff; but then she turned, laughing over her shoulder—the little flirt, at which he drew himself up, saluting as though she were the Queen. "I forgot," said the Blackguard regretfully.
"What?" asked the girl in fearless innocence.
"Why, that my horse is whinnying for me. He just loves to be saddled up and ridden all day. Come, make friends with the Devil while I saddle him."
CHAPTER VIII
The Tenderfoot must see the Blackguard a mile or so on his way, but La Mancha took him by a new route which sloped down quickly into the timber. The boy's heart beat high because the Blackguard treated him now as an equal, almost as a chum, and this, which he would have disdained yesterday morning, seemed a great condescension to-day. In his heart of hearts Mr. Ramsay felt a new thing—a craving for the rough frontier life, for the romance of savagery. A real Britisher is never thoroughly civilised; inside the veneer of the university lurks the schoolboy barbarian, blessed with the hereditary instinct of clenched fists, which gives world-mastery to the Dominant Race, that blood-thirst of the Vikings, that chivalry of the Middle Ages, that headlong courage of the sea heroes who took to water in the great days of Elizabeth, that masterfulness which afterwards created the most glorious empire the world has ever seen. Britain is not in Fleet Street, or Mayfair, or the City, but at heart a rough race of conquerors and rulers. So this Tenderfoot from Balham, awakening in one short day, shook off the garments of conventionalism, worshipping the Blackguard because he was brave and strong, hung furtively a pace behind him as they walked, that he might gloat upon a pair of big rowelled spurs, a glittering cartridge belt, and a big sheathed revolver. That is the way of an English lad since the very beginning, and that must be the way until the time when we fall to rise no more.