om, still brandishing
the ham-bone and kicking out with his legs. Dumping him into the car,
Joe mounted hastily and drove off. Mr. Lavender sat for two or three
minutes coming to his senses before full realization of what he had done
dawned on him. Then, flinging the ham-bone from him, he sank back among
the cushions, with his chin buried on his chest. "What have I done?" he
thought over and over again. "What have I done? Taken up the bone for a
Conscientious Objector--defended a renegade against great odds! My God!
I am indeed less than a public man!"

And in this state of utter dejection, inanition, and collapse, with Blink
asleep on his feet, he was driven back to Hampstead.

X

DREAMS A DREAM AND SEES A VISION

Though habitually abstemious, Mr. Lavender was so very hungry that
evening when he sat down to supper that he was unable to leave the
lobster which Mrs. Petty had provided until it was reduced to mere
integument. Since his principles prevented his lightening it with
anything but ginger-beer he went to bed in some discomfort, and, tired
out with the emotions of the day, soon fell into a heavy slumber, which
at dawn became troubled by a dream of an extremely vivid character. He
fancied himself, indeed, dressed in khaki, with a breastplate composed of
newspapers containing reports of speeches which he had been charged to
deliver to soldiers at the front. He was passing in a winged tank along
those scenes of desolation of which he had so often read in his daily
papers, and which his swollen fancy now coloured even more vividly than
had those striking phrases of the past, when presently the tank turned a
somersault, and shot him out into a morass lighted up by countless
star-shells whizzing round and above. In this morass were hundreds and
thousands of figures sunk like himself up to the waist, and waving their
arms above their heads. "These," thought Mr. Lavender, "must be the
soldiers I have come to speak to," and he tore a sheet off his
breastplate; but before he could speak from its columns it became thin
air in his hand; and he went on tearing off sheet after sheet, hoping to
find a speech which would stay solid long enough for him to deliver it.
At last a little corner stayed substantial in his hand, and he called out
in a loud voice: "Heroes!"

But at the word the figures vanished with a wail, sinking into the mud,
which was left covered with bubbles iridescent in the light of the
star-shells. A