ust be going. Good night, dear friend; and if you sleep only as well as
you deserve, I could wish you no better repose. Good-bye.

(_He moves toward the table from which the players are now rising_.)

GLADSTONE. That is a game, my dear Armitstead, which came to this country
nearly eight hundred years ago from the Crusades. Previously it had been
in vogue among the nomadic tribes of the Arabian desert for more than a
thousand years. Its very name, "backgammon," so English in sound, is but a
corruption from the two Arabic words _bacca_, and _gamma_ (my
pronunciation of which stands subject to correction), meaning--if I
remember rightly--"the board game." There, away East, lies its origin; its
first recorded appearance in Europe was at the Sicilian Court of the
Emperor Frederick II; and when the excommunication of Rome fell on him in
the year 1283, the game was placed under an interdict, which, during the
next four hundred years, was secretly but sedulously disregarded within
those impregnably fortified places of learning and piety, to which so much
of our Western civilisation is due, the abbeys and other scholastic
foundations of the Benedictine order. The book-form, in which the board
still conceals itself, stands as a memorial of its secretive preservation
upon the shelves of the monastic libraries. I keep my own, with a certain
touch of ritualistic observance, between this seventeenth century edition
of the works of Roger Bacon and this more modern one, in Latin, of the
writings of Thomas Aquinas; both of whom may not improbably have been
practitioners of the game.

ARMITSTEAD. Very interesting, very interesting.

(_During this recitation Mr. Gladstone has neatly packed away the
draughts and the dice, shutting them into their case finally and restoring
it to its place upon the bookshelf_.)

GLADSTONE. My dear, I have won the rubber.

MRS. G. Have you, my dear? I'm very glad, if Mr. Armitstead does not mind.

ARMITSTEAD. To be beaten by Mr. Gladstone, ma'am, is a liberal education
in itself.

MORLEY (_to his host_). I must say good-night, now, sir.

GLADSTONE. What, my dear Morley, must you be going?

MORLEY. For one of my habits it is almost late--eleven.

ARMITSTEAD. In that case I must be going, too. Can I drop you anywhere,
Morley?

MORLEY. Any point, not out of your way, in the direction of my own door, I
shall be obliged.

ARMITSTEAD. With pleasure. I will come at once. And so--good-night, Mrs.
Glad