He was very well dressed; he had a heavy but handsome face; his black
clothes suggested the City and his gray moustaches the Army; but the
whole suggested that he did not really belong to either, but was one
of those who dabble in shares and who play at soldiers. There was some
third element about him that was neither mercantile nor military. His
manners were a shade too gentlemanly to be quite those of a gentleman.
They involved an unction and over-emphasis of the club-man: then I
suddenly remembered feeling the same thing in some old actors or old
playgoers who had modelled themselves on actors. As I came in he said,
"If I was the Government," and then put a cigar in his mouth which he
lit carefully with long intakes of breath. Then he took the cigar out
of his mouth again and said, "I'd give it 'em," as if it were quite a
separate sentence. But even while his mouth was stopped with the cigar
his companion or interlocutor leaped to his feet and said with great
heartiness, snatching up a hat, "Well, I must be off. Tuesday!". I
dislike these dark suspicions, but I certainly fancied I recognised the
sudden geniality with which one takes leave of a bore.

When, therefore, he removed the narcotic stopper from his mouth it was
to me that he addressed the belated epigram. "I'd give it 'em."

"What would you give them," I asked, "the minimum wage?"

"I'd give them beans," he said. "I'd shoot 'em down shoot 'em down,
every man Jack of them. I lost my best train yesterday, and here's
the whole country paralysed, and here's a handful of obstinate fellows
standing between the country and coal. I'd shoot 'em down!"

"That would surely be a little harsh," I pleaded. "After all, they
are not under martial law, though I suppose two or three of them have
commissions in the Yeomanry."

"Commissions in the Yeomanry!" he repeated, and his eyes and face, which
became startling and separate, like those of a boiled lobster, made me
feel sure that he had something of the kind himself.

"Besides," I continued, "wouldn't it be quite enough to confiscate their
money?"

"Well, I'd send them all to penal servitude, anyhow," he said, "and I'd
confiscate their funds as well."

"The policy is daring and full of difficulty," I replied, "but I do not
say that it is wholly outside the extreme rights of the republic. But
you must remember that though the facts of property have become
quite fantastic, yet the sentiment of property still exists