In the fury of his excitement Alf thrust his head and shoulders far into the room.

"Got you this time!" he screamed to Joe, his face distorted with hate. "Mr. Spink!" he cried to somebody who must have been near by.

The engineer made a grab at him and seized him by the head.

"Got you, ye mean!" he bellowed and jerked the other bodily into the room. "Ah, ye dirty spyin tyke!—I\'ll learn you!"

He heaved his enemy from his knees to his feet and closed with him. The struggle was that of a parrot in the clutch of a tiger.

Joe carried his enemy to the door and slung him out head first. Alf brought up with a bang against a big car which had just drawn up outside.

A little lady sat in it.

"Will you get out of my way, please?" she said coldly to the man sprawling on his hands and knees in the dust at her feet, as she proceeded to descend.

The prostrate man raised his eyes and blinked. The lady passed him by as she might have passed a dead puppy lying in the road.

Joe crossed the path and examined with a certain detached interest, the door of the car against which Alf\'s head had crashed.

"Why, yo\'ve made quite a dent in your nice car," he said. "Pity." And he walked away down the street after Mr. Spink who was retiring discreetly round the corner.

Mrs. Lewknor entered the cottage.

Ruth was sitting in the kitchen, her hands in her lap, dazed.

The lady went over to her.

"It\'s all right, Ruth," she said gently in the other\'s ear.

Slowly Ruth recovered and poured the tale of the last twenty-four hours into the ear of her friend. It was the cruelty of her mother-in-law more than anything else that troubled her: for it was to her significant of the attitude of the world.

"That\'s her!" she said. "And that\'s them!—and that\'s how it is!"

Mrs. Lewknor comforted her; but Ruth refused to be comforted.

"Ah, you don\'t know em," she said. "But I been through it, me and little Alice. See I\'m alone again now Ernie\'s gone. And so they got me. And they know it and take advantage—and Mrs. Caspar, that sly and cruel, she leads em on."

"I think perhaps she\'s not as bad as she likes to make herself out," Mrs. Lewknor answered.

She opened her bag, took out a letter, and put it in Ruth\'s hand. It was from Anne Caspar, angular as the writer in phrase alike and penmanship, and in the pseudo-business vein of the daughter of the Ealing tobacconist.


Dear Madam,—If your Committee can help Mrs. Caspar in the Moot, board for herself and four children, I will pay rent of same.

Yours faithfully,
        Anne Caspar.


Later just as twilight began to fall Ruth went up to Rectory Walk. Anne was standing on the patch of lawn in front of the little house amid her tobacco plants, sweet-scented in the dusk, a shawl drawn tight about her gaunt shoulders.

Ruth halted on the path outside.

"I do thank you, Mrs. Caspar," she said, deep and quivering.

The elder woman did not look at her, did not invite her in. She tugged at the ends of her shawl and sniffed the evening with her peculiar smirk.

"Must have a roof over them, I suppose," she said. "Even in war-time."


The visit of Mrs. Trupp and Mrs. Lewknor to the Registrar at Lewes had proved entirely satisfactory. No marriage had taken place on the day in question, so examination disclosed. Mrs. Lewknor reported as much to her husband on her return home that evening.

The Colonel grinned the grin of an ogre about to take his evening meal of well-cooked children.

"We must twist Master Alf\'s tail," he said; "and not forget we owe him one ourselves."

At the next Committee meeting, which the Colonel attended, there was heavy fighting between the Army and the Church; and after it even graver trouble between Alf and the Reverend Spink.

"It\'s not only my reputation," cried the indignant curate. "It\'s the credit of the Church you\'ve shaken."

"I know nothing only the facts," retorted Alf doggedly—"if they\'re any good to you. I drove them there meself—14th September, 1906, four o\'clock of a Saturday afternoon and a bit foggy like. You can see it in the entry-book for yourself. They went into the Registrar\'s office single, and they walked out double, half-an-hour later. I see em myself, and you can\'t get away from the facts of your eyes, not even a clergyman can\'t."

Alf was additionally embittered because he felt that the curate had left him disgracefully in the lurch in the incident of the Moot. The Reverend Spink on his side—somewhat dubious in his heart of the part he had played on the fringe of that affair—felt that by taking the strong and righteous line now he was vindicating himself in his own eyes at least for any short-comings then.

"I shall report the whole thing to the Archdeacon," he said. "It\'s a scandal. He\'ll deal with you."

"Report it then!" snapped Alf. "If the Church don\'t want me, neether don\'t I want the Church."


The war was killing the Archdeacon, as Mr. Trupp had said it must.

The flames of his indomitable energy were devouring the old gentleman for all the world to see. He was going down to his grave, as he would have wished, to the roll of drums and roar of artillery.

Thus when the Reverend Spink went up to the Rectory to report on the delinquencies of the sidesman, he found his chief in bed and obviously spent.

The old gentleman made a pathetic figure attempting to maintain his dignity in a night-gown obviously too small for him, which served to emphasize his failing mortality.

His face was ghastly save for a faint dis-colouration about one eye; but he was playing his part royally still. His bitterest enemy must have admired his courage; his severest critic might have wept, so pitiful was the old man\'s make-believe.

On a table at his side were all the pathetic little properties that made the man. There was his snuff-box; there the filigree chain; a scent-bottle; a rosary; a missal. On his bed was the silver-mounted ebony cane; and beneath his pillow, artfully concealed to show, the butt-end of his pistol.

Over his head was the photograph of a man whom the curate recognised instantly as Sir Edward Carson; and beneath the photograph was an illuminated text which on closer scrutiny turned out to be the Solemn League and Covenant.

Facing the great unionist Leader on the opposite wall was the Emperor of the French. The likeness between the two famous Imperialists was curiously marked; and they seemed aware of it, staring across ............