"What is he to do in London?" Munro said. "The old pedant James, who
wouldn't spend a shilling or raise a dozen men to aid the cause of
his own daughter, and who thought more of musty dogmatic treatises
than of the glory and credit of the country he ruled over, or the
sufferings of his co-religionists in Germany, has left no career
open to a lad of spirit."

"Well, I will think it over by the morning," Graheme said. "And now
tell me a little more about the merits of this quarrel in Germany.
If I am going to fight, I should like at least to know exactly what
I am fighting about."

"My dear fellow," Hume laughed, "you will never make a soldier
if you always want to know the ins and outs of every quarrel you
have to fight about; but for once the tenderest conscience may be
satisfied as to the justice of the contention. But Munro is much
better versed in the history of the affair than I am; for, to tell
you the truth, beyond the fact that it is a general row between
the Protestants and Catholics, I have not troubled myself much in
the matter."

"You must know," Colonel Munro began, "that some twenty years
ago the Protestant princes of Germany formed a league for mutual
protection and support, which they called the Protestant Union; and
a year later the Catholics, on their side, constituted what they
called the Holy League. At that time the condition of the Protestants
was not unbearable. In Bohemia, where they constituted two-thirds
of the population, Rudolph II, and after him Mathias, gave conditions
of religious freedom.