hing his beer, "I will go and drill the troops."

And he walked out of the milk-shop, leaving the Provost staring.

A minute or two afterwards, the Provost laughed. He only laughed once
or twice in his life, and then he did it in a queer way as if it were
an art he had not mastered. Even he saw something funny in the
preposterous coup of the half-crowns and the little boys. He did not
see the monstrous absurdity of the whole policy and the whole war. He
enjoyed it seriously as a crusade, that is, he enjoyed it far more
than any joke can be enjoyed. Turnbull enjoyed it partly as a joke,
even more perhaps as a reversion from the things he hated--modernity
and monotony and civilisation. To break up the vast machinery of
modern life and use the fragments as engines of war, to make the
barricade of omnibuses and points of vantage of chimney-pots, was to
him a game worth infinite risk and trouble. He had that rational and
deliberate preference which will always to the end trouble the peace
of the world, the rational and deliberate preference for a short life
and a merry one.

CHAPTER III--_The Experiment of Mr. Buck_

An earnest and eloquent petition was sent up to the King signed with
the names of Wilson, Barker, Buck, Swindon, and others. It urged that
at the forthcoming conference to be held in his Majesty's presence
touching the final disposition of the property in Pump Street, it
might be held not inconsistent with political decorum and with the
unutterable respect they entertained for his Majesty if they appeared
in ordinary morning dress, without the costume decreed for them as
Provosts. So it happened that the company appeared at that council in
frock-coats and that the King himself limited his love of ceremony to
appearing (after his not unusual manner), in evening dress with one
order--in this case not the Garter, but the button of the Club of Old
Clipper's Best Pals, a decoration obtained (with difficulty) from a
halfpenny boy's paper. Thus also it happened that the only spot of
colour in the room was Adam Wayne, who entered in great dignity with
the great red robes and the great sword.

"We have met," said Auberon, "to decide the most arduous of modern
problems. May we be successful." And he sat down gravely.

Buck turned his chair a little, and flung one leg over the other.

"Your Majesty," he said, quite good-humouredly, "there is only one
thing I can't understand, and that is why this affair is n