Had Hughs allowed his inclinations play, or sought to express himself, he could hardly have been a private soldier; still less, on his retirement from that office with an honourable wound, would he have been selected out of many others as a Vestry scavenger.

For such an occupation as the lifting from the streets of the refuses of Life--a calling greatly sought after, and, indeed, one of the few open to a man who had served his country--charm of manner, individuality, or the engaging quality of self-expression, were perhaps out of place.
He had never been trained in the voicing of his thoughts, and, ever since he had been wounded, felt at times a kind of desperate looseness in his head.

It was not, therefore, remarkable that he should be liable to misconstruction, more especially by those who had nothing in common with him, except that somewhat negligible factor, common humanity.

The Dallisons had misconstrued him as much as, but no more than, he had misconstrued them when, as "Westminister" had informed Hilary, he "went on against the gentry." He was, in fact, a ragged screen, a broken vessel, that let light through its holes.

A glass or two of beer, the fumes of which his wounded head no longer dominated, and he at once became "dreadful foreign." Unfortunately, it was his custom, on finishing his work, to call at the "Green Glory." On this particular afternoon the glass had become three, and in sallying forth he had felt a confused sense of duty urging him to visit the house where this girl for whom he had conceived his strange infatuation "carried on her games." The "no-tale-bearing" tradition of a soldier fought hard with this sense of duty; his feelings were mixed when he rang the bell and asked for Mrs.Dallison.Habit, however, masked his face, and he stood before her at "attention," his black eyes lowered, clutching his peaked cap.
Blanca noted curiously the scar on the left side of his cropped black head.
Whatever Hughs had to say was not said easily.
"I've come," he began at last in a dogged voice, "to let you know.