und himself, a new man, girt and armed by
this new passion of hate; stung and uplifted, as it were, by the sight
of that which he can smite with a whole heart. It's deeply
interesting'--I said to myself--'Who could have dreamed of such a
reincarnation; for what on the surface could possibly be less alike than
an 'Ironside,' and Harburn as I've known him up to now?' And I used his
face for the basis of a cartoon which represented a human weather-vane
continually pointing to the East, no matter from what quarter the wind
blew. He recognised himself, and laughed when he saw me--rather pleased,
in fact, but in that laugh there was a sort of truculence, as if the man
had the salt taste of blood at the back of his mouth.

"Ah!" he said, "you may joke about it, but I've got my teeth into them
all right. The swine!"

And there was no doubt he had--the man had become a force; unhappy
Germans, a few of them spies, no doubt, but the great majority as
certainly innocent, were being wrenched from their trades and families,
and piled into internment camps all day and every day. And the faster
they were piled in, the higher grew his stock, as a servant of his
country. I'm sure he did not do it to gain credit; the thing was a
crusade to him, something sacred--'his bit'; but I believe he also felt
for the first time in his life that he was really living, getting out of
life the full of its juice. Was he not smiting hip and thigh? He
longed, I am sure, to be in the thick of the actual fighting, but age
debarred him, and he was not of that more sensitive type which shrinks
from smiting the defenceless if it cannot smite anything stronger. I
remember saying to him once:

"Harburn, do you ever think of the women and children of your victims?"

He drew his lips back, and I saw how excellent his teeth were.

"The women are worse than the men, I believe," he said. "I'd put them
in, too, if I could. As for the children, they're all the better for
being without fathers of that kidney."

He really was a little mad on the subject; no more so, of course, than
any other man with a fixed idea, but certainly no less.

In those days I was here, there, and everywhere, and had let my country
cottage, so I saw nothing of the Holsteigs, and indeed had pretty well
forgotten their existence. But coming back at the end of 1917 from a
long spell with the Red Cross I found among my letters one from Mrs.
Holsteig:

"Dear Mr. Cumbermere,

Y