grew blind in its old age, reverencing a man-hewn symbol, a
fragment of wood, a sacerdotal ring, when the emblem of creation, of
being, the very glory of God made manifest, hung resplendent in the
heavens! Men scoffed at miracles, and the greatest miracle of all rose
daily before their eyes; questioned the source of life, and every blade
of grass pointed upward to it, every flower raised its face adoring it;
doubted eternity whilst the eternal flames that ever were, are and ever
shall be, burned above their heads! Those nameless priests of a vanished
creed who made Stonehenge, drew nearer perhaps to the Divine mystery
than modern dogma recognised.

So ran his thoughts, for on a sunny morning, although perhaps
sub-consciously, every man becomes a fire-worshipper. Then came the dim
booming--and a new train of reflection. Beneath the joyous heavens men
moiled and sweated at the task of slaying. Doubting souls, great
companies of them, even now were being loosed upon their mystic journey.
Man slew man, beast slew beast, and insect devoured insect. The tiny red
beetle that he had placed upon the rose bush existed only by the death
of the aphides which were its prey; the spider, too, preyed. But man was
the master slayer. It was jungle law--the law of the wilderness
miscalled life; which really was not life but a striving after life.

Realising, anew, how wildly astray from simple truth the world had
wandered, how ridiculous were the bickerings which passed for religious
thought, how puerile, inadequate, the dogmas that men named creeds, he
trembled spiritually before the magnitude of his task. He doubted his
strength and the purity of his motives. "Any fool can smash a Ming pot,
but no man living to-day can make one." Dear old Don had a way of
saying quaint things that meant much. The world was very fair to look
upon; but for some odd reason a mental picture of Damascus seen from the
Lebanon Mountains arose before him. Perhaps that was how the world
looked to the gods--until they sought to live in it.

* * * * *

Coming out into the narrow winding lane beyond the lodge gates, Paul saw
ahead of him a shambling downcast figure, proceeding up the slope.

"Good morning, Fawkes," he called.

Fawkes stopped as suddenly as Lot's wife, but unlike Lot's wife without
looking around, and stood in the road as rigid as she. Paul came up to
his side, and the gamekeeper guiltily raised the peak of his c