The placard, seen by the Colonel, announced the opening of a new scene in the Irish tragedy.

The King had summoned a Conference at Buckingham Palace in order if possible to find a solution of the difficulty. When the Conference met the King opened it in person and, speaking as a man weighed down by anxiety, told the members that for weeks he had watched with deep misgivings the trend of events in Ireland. "To-day the cry of Civil War is on the lips of the most responsible of my people," he said; and had added, so Mr. Trupp told the Colonel, in words not reported in the Press, that the European situation was so ominous as imperatively to demand a solution of our domestic differences in order that the nation might present a solid front to the world.

"And I bet he knows," ended the old surgeon, as he said good-bye on the steps of the Manor-house.

"I bet he does," replied the Colonel. "Thank God there\'s one man in the country who\'s above party politics." He climbed thoughtfully on to the top of the bus outside the Star, and, as it chanced, found himself sitting beside Ernie, who was deep in his paper and began to talk.

"They ain\'t got it all their own way, then," he said, grimly. "I see the Irish Guards turned out and lined the rails and cheered Redmond as he came down Birdcage Walk back from the Conference."

"I don\'t like it," replied the Colonel gloomily. "Rotten discipline. The Army has no politics."

"What about the officers at the Curragh?" asked Ernie almost aggressively. "They begun it. Give the men a chance too."

"Two wrong things don\'t make a right," retorted the Colonel sharply.

Ernie got down at the station without a word. Was it an accident the Colonel, sensitive as a girl, asked himself? was it a deliberate affront? What was the world coming to? That man an old Hammer-man! One of Bobby Bermondsey yahoos wouldn\'t treat him so!

Indeed the avalanche was now sliding gradually down the mountain-side, gathering way as it went, to overwhelm the smiling villages sleeping peacefully in the valley.

Next day oppressed by imminent catastrophe, the Colonel, climbing Beau-nez in the afternoon to take up his habitual post of vigil by the flag-staff, found Joe Burt and Mr. Geddes already there.

Both men, he marked, greeted him almost sombrely.

"It looks to me very serious," he said. "Austria means to go for Serbia, that\'s clear; and if she does Russia isn\'t going to stand by and see Serbia swallowed up. What d\'you think, Mr. Geddes?"

The other answered him on that note of suppressed indignation which characterised increasingly his utterance when he touched on this often discussed subject.

"I think Colonel, what I\'ve thought all along," he answered: "that if we\'re in the eve of a European eruption the attitude of the officers of the British Army is perfectly inexplicable."

He was firm almost to ferocity.

"Hear! hear!" growed Joe.

"But they don\'t know, poor beggars!" cried the Colonel, exasperated yet appealing. He felt as he had felt throughout the controversy that he was fighting with his hands tied behind his back. "Do be just, Mr. Geddes. They are merely the playthings of the politicians. O, if you only knew the regimental officer as I know him! He\'s like that St. Bernard dog over there by the coast-guard station—the most foolish and faithful creature on God\'s earth. Smith pats him on the head and tells him he\'s a good dorg, and he\'ll straightway beg for the privilege of being allowed to die for Smith. What\'s a poor ignorant devil of a regimental officer quartered at Aldershot or the Curragh or Salisbury Plain likely to know of the European situation?"

The tall minister was not to be appeased.

"Ignorance seems to me a poor justification for insubordination in an Army officer," he said. "And even if one is to accept that excuse for the regimental officers, one can\'t for a man like the Director of Military Strategics, who is said to have specialised in war with Germany. Yet that is the man who has co-operated, to put it at the mildest, in arming a huge rebel force with guns from the very country he has always affirmed we\'re bound to fight. It\'s stabbing the Empire in the back, neither more nor less."

He was pale, almost dogmatic.

Then Joe barged in, surly and brutal.

"The whole truth is," he said, "that the officers of the British Army to-day don\'t know how to spell the word Duty. Havelock did. Gordon did. And all the world respected them accordingly. These men don\'t. They\'ve put their party before their coontry as A\'ve always said they would when the pinch came."

The Colonel was trembling slightly.

"If the test comes," he said, "we shall see."

"The test has come," retorted the other savagely, "And we have seen."

The Colonel walked swiftly away. In front of him half a mile from the flag-staff, he marked a man standing waist-deep in a clump of gorse. There was something so forlorn about the figure that the Colonel approached, only to find that it was Ernie, who on his side, seeing the other, quitted the ambush, and came slowly towards him. To the Colonel the action seemed a cry of distress. All his resentment at the incident on the bus melted away in a great compassion.

"She and me used to lay there week-ends when first we married," Ern said dreamily, nodding towards the gorse he had just left.

"And she and you will live there for many happy years, I hope," replied the Colonel warmly, pointing towards the garage in the coombe beneath them.

Ernie regarded him inquiringly.

"What\'s that, sir?"

"Aren\'t you coming?"

"Where to?"

"My garage?"

Ernie did not understand and the Colonel explained.

"Didn\'t Mrs. Caspar tell you?"

"Ne\'er a word," the other answered blankly.


The Colonel dropped down to Carlisle Road. There Mr. Trupp picked him up and drove him on to the club for tea. Fresh news from Ulster was just being ticked off on the tape. An hour or two before, a rebel unit, the East Belfast regiment of volunteers, some 5,000 str............