CHAPTER VIII

The Rev. Charles Gapworthy, B.A., sometime fellow and chaplain of St Lazarus Hys Hostel, Bermondsey, S.E., tells us in his “Political Economy for Schools” (chap. ii. “Capital,” p. 28) that “economic force resides ultimately, not in material accumulation, but in a certain bold prevision of the mind.” The truth is but one more example of the power residing in what we denominate, in this country, the “Christian virtue of Hope.”

The M’Korio Delta Development Company had been but an idea. That idea had even seemed, for some months, to languish, when the accession of Mr Burden’s reputation, his Faith (which had made the formation of the syndicate possible), and, for that matter, his twenty-five thousand pounds, though they were but the outward sign of inward spiritual things, lent to the whole adventure body and life. Its aspect changed; it became concrete, as it were: a thing to be named, handled, criticised, combated, defended with passionate enthusiasm; a national Force in Being.

THE REV. CHARLES GAPWORTHY, B.A.(FROM A BLOCK VERY KINDLY LENT BY “THE ST LAZARUS HYS HOSTEL MAGAZINE; A REVIEW OF SOCIAL PROGRESS”)

Mr Barnett was the first to sacrifice himself in the cause for which so many in the end laid down their all. He left the Edgeware Road, and took a considerable mansion overlooking the Park, convenient to the Twopenny Tube, possessing a southern aspect, and so near to the Marble Arch as to boast nobility of site. He thought it his duty (and the future has proved him wise) to hire a carriage with two horses, men in livery, and a box at the Opera: nor did he hesitate to ensure to the daily papers, even to those with whose editors he was intimate, a fixed contract of advertisement, in return for which, as the courtesy of journalism demands, certain of his doings were published, and commentary upon others omitted.

If it be true, as Canon Cone has so beautifully put it in his Christmas sermon on Kingdom, that “we can serve England better with our heads than with our hearts,” most nobly did Mr Barnett serve her.

His dinners, the principal of which were given weekly upon Fridays, when Parliament was resting from its labours and before the well-earned week-end had begun, his dinners, I say, recruited their guests with a peculiar discretion. Rarely did more than twenty sit down together, never, even when that numberwas exceeded, did men or cooking of inferior value weaken the effect of the meal.

Gatherings less formal distinguished or enlivened the remaining evenings, saving that of the Sabbath, which, in fine contrast to so many around him, Mr Barnett remembered to keep it holy.

His suggestions were an inspiration, not only to the young men whom he had launched into our world of Letters, but to a multitude who had hitherto known him only by repute, and who, in spite of the legendary difficulty of approaching so great a man, were introduced to him in batches—before lunch, at tea times, and (by appointment) in the early morning.

By a happy coincidence, the very force of things seemed to fight upon his side. “The stars in their courses,” as Canon Cone, careless of political opposition,[9]magnificently put it, “fought for,” the tradition of which Mr Barnett was but a part, however distinguished.

Men influenced by Mr Barnett in no way; men who had never met him, were caught by the flame of his genius.

CANON CONE DELIVERING HIS CHIVALROUS ATTACK UPON THE INCARNATION(A THUMBNAIL SKETCH TAKEN BY THE REPORTER OF “CHRISTENDOM,” AND CALLED BY HIM “CANON CONE IN ACTION”)

CANON CONE IN REPOSE, DISCUSSING MATTERS UNCONNECTED WITH DOGMA AT THE DUCHESS OF LAVINGTON’S(A SKETCH PURCHASED FROM HER GRACE’S SECRETARY AT THE TIME, NOW DOOR-KEEPER AT THE VARIETY, BISMARK, PA., U.S.A.)

Sir Philip Marshall, for example, if anything a recluse, sent toThe Nineteenth Century(and after) from his distant home at the Land’s End,his famous article upon Germany and the M’Korio valley.

Young Coster chose for his principal picture of the year the title, “Moonrise upon the Marshes of the M’Korio.” It was hung upon the line ... and so upwards to the ceiling, and though its dimensions caused a considerable portion of its area to escape the eyes of the spectator, its main features attracted universal attention. Indeed, it was in stepping back to obtain a comprehensive view of it, that Sir Henry Baile cannoned into the aged Duchess of Lavington, who was herself lost in contemplation of the canvas. The contretemps and the unhappy scene it led to, would be too trivial to find a mention here did they not serve to show the public zeal for all that concerned the M’Korio. That picture also furnishes, by the way, what I believe to be the only example of any direct interference on the part of Mr Burden himself with a national enthusiasm which he rightly regarded as the stronger for its spontaneity: I mean the little note in which he begged the artist to change the word “marshes” to “lagoons,” a request which was at once complied with.

In the New Gallery a powerful piece of impressionism, “The River of Fate,” by Miss Paxter, turned upon the same theme; allLondon talked of the blue-eyed Somersetshire lad, who lay there in his khaki, floating with upturned face upon the dark waters. The public subscription which was raised for his aged parents, and their subsequent conviction for fraud, are not to the purpose of my tale, unless it be to take this opportunity of defending Miss Paxter with all the warmth of which I am capable, from the suggestion that she knew the old people to be childless, or the incident itself to be fictitious.

A further proof of Mr Barnett’s self-abnegation, and of the absence of all financial pressure, during the growth of the movement, exists in the fact that Messrs Pscheuffer, desiring to publish a book upon the M’Korio Delta, wrote to Mr Barnett, and that he, with a fine sense of what was due to his honour, refused to write so much as the preface, or even to accept the dedication of the volume. He referred the firm to Major Pondo, and washed his hands off the whole matter.

The success of the M’Korio village at Earl’s Court, if a plebeian, was yet a genuine indication of the popular feeling. It was crowded throughout the season; and the chief, a magnificent Basuto named Issachar, was pensioned by an enthusiastic admirer who prefers to remain anonymous.

DR MOHLFROM THE OIL PAINTING PRESENTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF DORPOTT BY HIS MAJESTY WILLIAM II, EMPEROR AND KING

Even the neglected museum of Theoretical Geography received, for the first time in forty years, a daily influx of visitors eager to behold the raised map of the M’Korio Delta. The absolute flatness, and consequent ease of cultivation, of the region could not be better appreciated than in this graphic form.

Two rival hosiers, having each patented a type of collar under the name of “The M’Korio,” went to law to decide which should have the right of using so valuable a title. The case was reported at great length, and aroused the widest interest and discussion. It is one of his many acts of private generosity, so few of which I have been able to record in this book, that Mr Barnett recouped the loser of this action for his trouble and expense out of his own pocket, and gave him a handsome present beside.

Finally, in abrochureof the utmost interest, based upon vast research, and expressed with admirable economy of proof, Dr Mohl, of the University of Dorpott, conclusively identified the Delta with the Sheol of the Old Testament.

I would it were my lot to set down nothing save the positive side of this wave of success; but I owe it to Mr Barnett, and also to the truth, to touch upon such opposition as the movement encountered.

This opposition was not always consciously exerted. It existed none the less.

An article appeared in a German Review advocating the purchase of the Delta by Germany, with one of whose colonies it was coterminous. The wound it dealt was the deeper from the fact that Mr Barnett’s own second cousin, Baron Bloch, was the author of the article, which appeared above his pseudonym of “Sympathicus.” It was good to hear the outburst of indignation with which this proposal was met in England. We were saved by the rally of our own blood to our side. The article “Git,” which appeared in the principal American newspaper in London, was undoubtedly the turning point, after which the City and the banking interest determined to support what was feared at the time to be the vacillating policy of the Government.

Owing to the persistence of a very wealthy private member, whom no arguments could mollify, unexpected difficulties arose in the transference of the Delta from the Foreign to the Colonial Office, a trifling but necessary formality which could not be accomplished till much later, in August, when the close season for grouse was at an end.

BARON BLOCH(FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY M. M. BALLARU ET CIE., 147bis, RUE ST. LOUP. LES CLICHÉS SONT LA PROPRIÉTÉ EXCLUSIVE DE LA MAISON)

The correspondent ofThe Timesat Kurù, in a long course of articles, which did more thananything else to teach the monied classes what the M’Korio might mean, never once mentioned the company nor any of its supporters—and there are conditions under which such neutrality is dangerous.

Against all this Mr Barnett bore up with an heroic tenacity.

There was but one feature in all the field before him which gave him any serious anxiety, and this was that unhappy vacillation which I have already so often shown Mr Burden to have displayed, from the moment that he plunged into efforts ill-suited to his training and experience.

It was necessary, upon the face of it, that Mr Abbott should be invited to join the original promoters, to “chip in,” as Mr Barnett put it in somewhat excessive joviality of phrase.

But Mr Abbott was Faroosh. None but Mr Burden could approach him, and frequently as he had been asked to do so, Mr Burden hesitated; a childish hesitation; a man shrinking from a scene.

But if Mr Abbott’s directorship could wait, there were other and more disquieting symptoms in Mr Burden’s manner. He had fits of silence. For days he saw eye to eye with all his colleagues—and then, suddenly, a note would come, short, querulous, excusing himself fromattending the most important functions. At last, during the great reception in the beginning of July, Mr Barnett grew seriously concerned.

My pen has not the leisure to describe the brilliancy of that function. It was a scene which could not be matched in any capital of Europe, hardly in London itself, elsewhere than in the little district which is bounded on the north by Hyde Park Square and Seymour Street, on the east by Park Street, on the south and west by the misty distances of Hyde Park. It was worthy of all that was said of it in theMorning Postupon the one hand, in theIndépendence Belgeupon the other—but I can mention it only in connection with Mr Burden’s distressing mutability.

One thing had given Mr Barnett real hope; and that was Mr Burden’s attitude towards what I may call the more common-place side of all this matter of the M’Korio. A very genuine interest had appeared in the old man’s face whenever he discussed the history or the geography of the M’Korio. There ran through his character that tendency towards futile pottering which led our grandfathers—with a mighty empire before them—to waste their energies upon the foundation of learned societies. During those enormous dinners, where every celebrity had elbowed him, Mr Burden hadoften given cause for the very gravest fears to the more masterful mind of the leader. But whenever he had an opportunity of discussing Dr Mohl’s pamphlet with such experts as M. Sabbat or Canon Cone, his animation and delight relieved Mr Barnett’s apprehension. On the famous night when the first of our geologists maintained the undoubted presence of gold in the M’Korio, and when, in the startled silence that followed, Mr Barnett (smiling that famous smile) had handed the model of the nugget from guest to guest, Mr Burden, ignoring all that the news portended for his country, showed an excited interest in the unique geological conditions which could produce metallic deposits in a deep bed of decomposing vegetable matter.

It was with confidence, therefore, that, on the occasion of this great reception at Barnett House, the host led Mr Burden proudly forward to present him to Major Pondo, whose book, “The African River,” had during the past six days marked him out as the chief expert upon that region.

The centre of every remark, the chief object of every introduction throughout the evening, and now, upon Mr Burden’s late arrival the natural recipient of his views, Major Pondo was for the moment one of the land marks of London.

It was observed that Mr Burden stopped somewhat suddenly, as in amazement, when he approached the soldier; and, indeed, the sight which met his gaze was novel to him, and might have proved entrancing to a better balanced mind.

Major Pondo, who boasted no regular commission from any crowned head or president, had yet perhaps seen more real fighting than any of those who are pleased to call themselves professional soldiers. Even in this brilliant assembly, a dark contusion upon his left cheek-bone was markedly visible, and a deep gash, clumsily sewn up across the cusp of the chin, marked an adventure suffered somewhere far from medical aid. In stature, he has been described as so short as to be almost dwarfish. It is an error into which my contemporaries have been led by the sturdy build and short, strong neck of the explorer. His exact height, as it appears in official records, where the photograph, thumb-marks, and many other accurate measurement of his anatomy are preserved, is 1·3587 metres, or in English notation, almost exactly five feet two inches.

MAJOR PONDO(AN EXTRACT FROM THE PICTURE OF THE RECEPTION AT BARNETT HOUSE. BY THE COURTESY OF THE PROPRIETORS OF “SOCIAL SKETCHES,” A WEEKLY MAGAZINE)

Tropical suns and arctic snows in Mexico and Manitoba had tanned his skin to the colour of wet elm. His teeth were even andof a brilliant white, which stood in almost painful relief against the complexion I have described.

His head, which was of great size, was bald, save for a considerable cluster of hair at the back and just beside the ears. But though this adornment was sparse, it was never unkempt; and Mr Burden, while yet he was some way off, could distinguish upon it the gloss of a recent unguent. The scalp was a mighty dome, and over the eyes was fixed a frown, which indicated less a habit of scowling than the fixed impression of indomitable energy. The face was clean shaven, and the eyes of a beautiful soft brown, approaching black. Their glances were slow and measured, but seemed to betray a certain unfamiliarity with his surroundings. The right foot thrust out firmly a few inches before the left; the right hand, holding the coffee cup in a simple but powerful gesture, the left clenched just above the small of his back, such was the figure whose name at least is familiar to every Englishman, such was the human monolith which stood immovable in the swirling of the throng as Mr Burden approached it with wondering eyes. Mr Barnett introduced and left them together.

In that introduction the explorer had bowed, but had not uttered a word. To the firstremarks Mr Burden somewhat timidly made, he replied with gestures alone; to a compliment, with a slight smile; to a theory upon the climate of the M’Korio valley, with a cough that committed him to nothing.

My old friend has confessed to me that, for some moments, he was in dread lest Major Pondo might be dumb. He was even seized with a terror that the man was ill-acquainted with the English language, until the word “Yas!” mouthed out in the rich accent of Jamaica, convinced him that he was in error. It was the prelude to a short account, delivered as it were by rote, of the Major’s life and adventures, at the close of which dark silence redescended. Mr Burden, so far from finding his suspicions allayed, was tortured with every manner of doubt.

If it were my purpose to defend my friend, I should find no difficulty in holding such a brief. It must be remembered that he was wholly ignorant of the new world into which he had wandered, and that men such as Major Pondo, or indeed any other of those who yearly and almost daily spread the bounds of our power, were quite unknown to him. His irritability and unstable spirit, the result, as I still believe, of old age, have been evident throughout these pages, and it must be addedthat the hour was late—far later than the merchant would have permitted himself had he obeyed his medical adviser—that the glare, the heat, the multitude, all combined to arouse in him a morbid judgment, and to enflame distorted views which were due in the main to the failure of his health.

But it is not my business to defend him. I have no duty but to enumerate quite simply, the facts in their order. Were I to trespass upon another ground, I might find myself in competition with the labours of Mr and Mrs O’Rourke, the very mention of whose existence I particularly desire to avoid.

Be the cause what it may, when Mr Barnett returned to lead Mr Burden to another guest, so far from having brought my friend into greater harmony with the astounding energies of the new movement, he had produced, by that interview with Major Pondo, a sentiment—I repeat it, a morbid sentiment—approaching disgust.

There was nothing which, at that moment, Mr Burden would not have believed. There was no anti-patriotic libel, no little-England mania or lie, no dead and gone Cobdenism of the sixties, which he would not have accepted after that brief experience.

He left the house that night, full of a kindof angry determination to go next day and do what he had never yet dared to do: to speak to Mr Abbott. But he would speak to him in a sense very different from that which Mr Barnett had intended when he had asked him to call upon that life-long friend, and to offer him a directorship.... He would see Abbott, he would tell him of the risk to a considerable fortune, of his doubts, of the torturing alternation of his mind: he would find true stable comradeship and relief.

Fate, and the nature of men, led on to their meeting indeed, but brought it, in spite of them both, to a very different end.

When Mr Burden awoke next morning, the deep sleep of fatigue and the good light of a new day had somewhat changed his mood. There remained of it nothing but an undercurrent of anxiety, which the conversation of Cosmo that morning did very much to allay.

The day’s business at the office was prosperous, the air bracing and sunny; if he found himself walking towards Mr Abbott’s office that evening for the first time in so many weeks, it was only because he was a business man, trained to method, and that therefore he detested to abandon any resolve he had formed.

He came severely, and with a purpose, intothe little panelled room which had seen for 123 years the growth of the Abbott Line.

The place reeked of our past; but there was that in it which has justly provided the financial press with a pet subject for ridicule. It was as small as the cabin of a ship; indeed it had sheltered three generations of men who had sailed as owners perpetually in their own craft. It suggested the punch and the tobacco of that lazy race of seamen, who knew of nothing but England, and cared for nothing but her; and yet—in a way—we love them. It suggested very primitive methods of business: phrases about “The position of the house,” the plodding and the short-sightedness of the men whose theories in government and finance we have, please God, finally abandoned. And at the old large desk, in this old small room, sat a figure most worthy of its frame.

Mr Abbot was in everything one of the characters which, pleasing as they may still be in fiction to-day, would be sand in the bearings of England, ruining the machine, were they to reappear in our modern life.

There was nothing in him of what a true citizen has under the stress and vision of our time.

He was tall, stout, and rubicund; his voice, which was louder than that of a gentlemanshould be, pushed “cheeriness” up to and beyond the bounds of vulgarity. The obstinacy which his features partly betrayed was immediately apparent when he began to discuss any controversial matter. He was cocksure of this and of that, upon twenty subjects where men of an analytical power infinitely superior had, in the vast intellectual expansion of these latter years, been content to doubt or to criticise.

He was, in a word, what he would have called “sound.” He was “sound” upon Free Trade; he was “sound” upon the maintenance of the gold standard—a matter upon which he could know absolutely nothing. He was “sound” in his contempt for “foreigners”—in which category he was pleased to include what he denominated “Yankees.” He loved England—but what he loved was the soil, the air, the habit; not that great vision we possess. He clipped his words in a manner so heartily unconscious and offensive that, for all his great wealth, the entry into a rank above that of his birth would have been denied him. He did not attempt it.

“COMPETITION! SIR; COMPETITION!”

To strangers he would come out with a great roaring “sir,” at the end of every other sentence. His conversations began with remarks upon the weather (commonly in condemnation of it) and would, I regret to say, not infrequentlyterminate with an oath, as he expressed his difference from the more modern views of his companion. He would often follow up such an expletive by uttering the undoubted truth “that that was allheknew about it,” or that “it was allhehad to say.”

By some accident, probably of party tradition, he had followed Mr Gladstone in his policy of Home Rule for Ireland; but nothing save an inexcusable mulishness had made him continue to defend that worn-out error when all his friends had abandoned it.

It is not remarkable that, with such a character, he should have found himself totally out of sympathy with the principal economic trend of our time, and should have boldly refused to amalgamate the Abbott Line with any combination of shipowners. I can almost see him as I write, sitting at the table at the Palmerston, where he lunched, and shouting: “Competition, sir, competition!” at the unhappy Zachary K. Peabody, the agent of the African Steamship Trust, whose refinement he was too coarse to perceive, and whose practical experience of commerce he derided.

His features were, in their outline, projecting and masculine; his eyes firm, his chin solid. His hair, which was always in disorder, was of a sharp iron-grey, and two little whiskers,nearly white, emphasised the squareness of his face. But the strength of his mouth was weakened by a perpetual tendency to laughter, and what he would have called “good-fellowship,” or, as I have heard it named, “Row.”

Many things had combined to give him his influence over Mr Burden. They had been young men together in the days when a common label of so-called Liberalism, the necessity for political effort, was sufficient to mask many essential differences of character between men. The greater vigour and more sanguine temperament of the shipowner had naturally over-borne the sobriety and occasional hesitation of the dealer in hardware. It must also be admitted, that in many of the small affairs of life—a narrow life, remember, and one whose horizon was easily surveyed—his judgment had rarely been at fault. It was he who had introduced Mr Burden to the trade in the M’Korio, and who would willingly—for as such crude natures often are, he was capable of affection—have gone to any sacrifice to preserve his friend from commercial or personal dishonour.

He was unmarried.

As for his judgment upon any of the great complexities of modern life, no worse judge could have been discovered than this utterlysimple, obstinate, loud-voiced man. His judgment upon such an adventure as Mr Barnett’s could hardly for a moment be in doubt. Mr Burden had felt it instinctively, and, for all these weeks, had carefully avoided that familiar room. Now at last he entered; but the very sight of Mr Abbott’s face roused in him a kind of warning that a severe difference of opinion might arise.

It will not surprise my readers to be told that Mr Abbott’s greeting was emphatic and commonplace, full of “eh’s?” and “Lord love me’s,” and “all this long time’s”; but there lay in it a kind of hint that Mr Abbott knew well enough the cause which had so prolonged that interval.

Natural as was hesitation to such a man upon such a subject, Mr Burden looking first in his friend’s eyes, and then away from them to a vile oil painting of theArethusa, said:

“Abbott, I have come to ask your advice upon a matter ... or perhaps I should say, I want to hear what you think of a matter....”

Mr Abbott replied that Mr Burden might “ask away,” and “whatever you’re going to do,” he continued, with a facile joviality, “take my advice and don’t.” He laughed boisterously, as is the fashion of such men, at his own wit, blew his nose in a resounding way,took out a pipe, filled it with an astonishing black tobacco, lit it and said:

“Fire it out, my lad. Out with her!”

It was some time since Mr Burden had suffered this kind of approach; and it cannot be denied that he was more than a little nettled. Perhaps he showed it in his tone. At anyrate he said shortly enough:

“I have come to ask you what you think of the M’Korio?”

“It stinks,” said Mr Abbott, decisively.

He shut his mouth upon the words like a gin; put his hands firmly upon the desk, as does a man upon a rudder bar, and looked up at Mr Burden.

“Whole country stinks. You’ve known places that stink. Barking Level stinks. Outthere, by God, the whole place stinks. Big as Yorkshire—I’ve been there, mind you, and you haven’t. Not a square yard but stinks!”

Indeed, Mr Abbott, in company with many who declaim against the corruption of our public life, would have done well to consider whether his language was not a greater offence against true morality than the actions and motives which he so recklessly ascribed to others.

“I came for advice, Abbott: not for abuse,” said Mr Burden.

He was thoroughly annoyed, and the whole purpose of his visit receded from him. He was annoyed by the self-satisfaction of his friend’s tone, by the excessive coarseness of his language, though it came from lips to which, I fear, coarseness was habitual. And he was, above all, annoyed to have thrust into the delicacy of his slight scruples this roaring objurgation.

“Who’s abusing you, man alive?” said Mr Abbott, in his great loud voice, staring in harmony with his tone.

Mr Burden, crossing his arms, and tapping the oilcloth with his left foot, answered, with quiet dignity, that Mr Abbott’s words implied an insult to his friends, to himself, and he might add, to the Empire.

Mr Abbott’s only reply was to draw his forefinger rapidly across his nose—a gesture to which he was most unfortunately addicted—to clench his fist, and to strike the table before him.

“The Empire?” said Mr Abbott, much as a man might say, “the giant Blunderbore?” Then he continued, more quietly: “Burden, you’re going mad.”

“Yes, the Empire,” said Mr Burden with some heat, and with more decision than he had yet shown. “I came for advice, Abbott,and, upon my soul, I think I’m more fit to give it you than you are to give it me.”

He had the firmness now to look Mr Abbott straight in the eye, and doing so, he said in a voice that was almost equally firm:

“Perhaps you do not know that they have found gold?”

“GOLD!” roared, bellowed, thundered Mr Abbott. He blew out a great breath, and whispered at the end of it: “Oh Lord in heaven!”

Mr Burden could bear no more.

He got up and said: “I’m sorry for this, Abbott, but I don’t think that either you or I will profit by continuing the scene.”

Mr Abbott rose at the same time from his big wooden chair.

“You may go if you like, Burden,” he said, wagging his forefinger, and staring into his friend’s face, as is the fashion of insolent men; “you may go if you like ... but don’t blame me if they knock you! They’re a lot of —— scoundrels, and if you have anything to do with them you’re a —— fool ... and remember I said so. Don’t blame me if they knock you!”

“I blame you for nothing but your expressions, Abbott,” said Mr Burden.

His legs were trembling beneath him withemotion; he repressed it, and walked slowly to the door, which he was careful to shut behind him with courteous ease.

When he was gone Mr Abbott, whose mind was closed to all save the most immediate things, stared at the door a moment, first blankly, then a little sadly. At last he gave an enormous cough, followed by a laugh yet more enormous, and within ten minutes had forgotten the scene in the intricacies of a policy.

But Mr Burden was thoroughly disturbed. He was the more hurt at his friend’s outburst, because at heart he had been on the defensive. Had Mr Abbott shown less violence, the advice—which he had rejected—would perhaps have sunk less deeply into his mind. As it was, the effect of the quarrel was this: that the wild words of Mr Abbott, the groundless insinuations which were those (at the best) of a fanatic, did more than the closest reason could have done. They took root in his heart, and bore a fruit of suspicion which never left him night or day.

He dined in the evening in town, alone, at an hotel—a thing he had not done for perhaps ten years. He purposely remained in that hotel for many hours, that he might be alone when he should reach home, and that he mightsleep before the very name M’Korio should reach his ears again. He took the 11.2, and did not reach his station till twenty minutes to twelve. It was close upon midnight when he unlocked the door of Avonmore.

He saw lights and heard voices; he came into the smoking-room whence they proceeded, and saw at the fire the profile of Cosmo, a little table with glasses, syphons and a whisky bottle, and beyond them, in his own deep padded chair, a cranium and a back which were most certainly those of Mr Barnett: of Mr Barnett in repose.

FOOTNOTES:[9]As the scurrilous poem beginning “It is, it is the Canon’s opening roar,” or the deliberate misprinting of the peroration to his Romanes lecture on Historical Christianity, “The soul of Ananias like a star,” etc.

[9]As the scurrilous poem beginning “It is, it is the Canon’s opening roar,” or the deliberate misprinting of the peroration to his Romanes lecture on Historical Christianity, “The soul of Ananias like a star,” etc.

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