(I) We are arrived now at one of those few deplorable incidents in Frank's career, against which there is no defense.

And the painful thing about it is that Frank never seemed to think that it required any defense.

He shows no penitence for it in his diary: and yet moralists are united in telling us that we must never do evil that good may come.

It is only, paralleled by his rash action in leaving Cambridge in defiance of all advice and good sense; so far, that is to say, as a legally permissible act, however foolish, can be paralleled by one of actual crime.
Moralists, probably, would tell us, in fact, that the first led inevitably to the second.
It fell out in this way.
Once or twice in his travels with the Major he had been haunted by an uncomfortable suspicion that this or that contribution that the warrior made to their common table had not been come by honestly.

When a gentleman, known to possess no more than tenpence, and with a predilection to drink, leaves the shelter of a small copse; let us say, at seven o'clock, and reappears, rather breathless, forty minutes later with a newly-plucked fowl--or even with a fowl not plucked at all, and still warm, or with half a dozen eggs; and, in addition, issues out again later in the evening and returns with a strong smell of spirits and a watery eye--it seems a little doubtful as to whether he has been scrupulously honest.