gh. And had it not
been that Blink and the maid seized his coat-tails he would have done
them severe injury. It was at this moment that Joe Petty, attracted by
the hullabaloo, arrived in the doorway, and running up to his master,
lifted him from behind and carried him from the room, 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