The Archdeacon and his sidesman walked back to Old Town from the station together.

Mr. Trupp and Mr. Pigott followed behind.

"The Archdeacon lags a bit," said the former.

"Yes," answered the other. "And I don\'t wonder. This war\'ll be the end of him yet. You heard about last night?"

The veteran had sallied out at midnight with an electric torch and the Reverend Spink to deal with spies who had been signalling from the top of the Downs.

Unhappily the stalker had himself been stalked by another patriot bent on the same errand. The two old gentlemen had arrested each other by the dew-pond on Warren Hill; and report had it that words and worse had passed between the two. In the small hours of the morning Anne Caspar, hearing voices, had risen and seen from her window the Archdeacon stalking down the road, dusty, draggled, his curate trotting with sullen barks at the heels of his chief. The Archdeacon had no prisoner, but he had lumbago, a scratch or two, and an indignant sense that his curate had proved both disloyal and inefficient. The two had parted at the Rectory gate wrathfully, the Reverend Spink offering his resignation.

Opposite his garage in the Golfs, Alf now said goodbye to his Rector, and crossed the road with an almost aggressively sprightly air. Mr. Trupp noticed it.

"What about him and his Touring Syndicate?" he asked.

"He\'s all right," answered Mr. Pigott. "Trust him for that. Artful isn\'t in it with Alf. Called his drivers together on the declaration of war, and made em a speech. Said he knew where they wanted to be—where he wanted to be himself: in the fighting line. He\'d be the last to stand between them and their duty. He wouldn\'t keep them to their contract. The Motor Transport was crying for them—five bob a day and glory galore. All he could do was to say God bless you and wish he could go himself—only his responsibilities...."

Mr. Trupp grinned.

"Did they swallow it down?" he asked.

"Like best butter," said Mr. Pigott. "He\'s got the tongue. He twisted em. Parliament\'s the place for Alf."

"Ah!" committed the other. "We\'re only beginning. This war\'ll find us all out too before we\'re through." ...

Alf turned into his yard.

A little group of broken down old men were waiting him there.

"Who are you?" he asked fiercely. "What you want?"

"We\'ve come on behalf of the cleaners, sir," said the spokesman, in the uncertain voice of the half-starved. "What about us?—The Army don\'t want us."

The group tittered a feeble deprecatory titter.

"H\'every man for himself in these days!" cried Alf, brief and brisk. "I\'m not the Charity Organisation Society."

The old man, a-quaver in voice and body, doddered forward, touching his hat. Undersized and shrunken through starvation during infancy, and brutal usage throughout his growing years, he was an example of the great principle we Christians have enforced and maintained throughout the centuries: that the world\'s hardest work should be done by the weakest. Tip, as he was called, had been a coal-porter till at fifty-five he dislocated his shoulder shifting loads too heavy for him. Thereafter he was partially disabled, a casualty of the Industrial War, and to be treated as such.

"Would you give us a week\'s money or notice, sir?" he said now in his shaking voice.

"Did I take you on by the week?" asked Alf ferociously.

"No, sir; by the day."

"Then what ye talking about?—Ain\'t I paid you up?"

"You paid us up, sir. Only we got to live."

"Very well then. There\'s the House at the top of the hill for such as you. Ain\'t that good enough? This is a Christian country, this is."

Alf was half-way up the steps to his office, and he pointed in the direction of the Work-house.

A curious tawny glow lit the old man\'s eyes. His lips closed over his gums.

"Bloody Bastille," he muttered.

Alf heard him and ran down the steps. He was still with the stillness of the born bully.

"None of that now," he said quietly. "No filthy language in my yard! And no loiterin eether!—Off you go or I send for the police. The country\'s got something better to think of than you and your likes, I reckon, just now."

He stood in the gate of the yard with the cold domineering air of the warder in charge of convicts.

The cleaners shambled away like a herd of mangy donkeys past work and turned out on waste land to die at their leisure.

They were broken men all, old and infirm, drawn from the dregs of that Reserve of Labour on which the capitalist system has been built. They belonged to no union; they were incapable of organisation and therefore of defence against the predatory class ...

"We got no bloody country, men like us ain\'t."

"Nor no bloody Chr............