s in the romantic manner? Suppose that, as you were
fighting blindly with the red Notting Hillers who imprisoned you on
both sides, you had heard a shout from behind them. Suppose, oh,
romantic Barker! that behind the red tunics you had seen the blue and
gold of South Kensington taking them in the rear, surrounding them in
their turn and hurling them on to your halberds."

"If the thing had been possible," began Barker, cursing.

"The thing would have been as possible," said Buck, simply, "as simple
as arithmetic. There are a certain number of street entries that lead
to Pump Street. There are not nine hundred; there are not nine
million. They do not grow in the night. They do not increase like
mushrooms. It must be possible, with such an overwhelming force as we
have, to advance by all of them at once. In every one of the arteries,
or approaches, we can put almost as many men as Wayne can put into the
field altogether. Once do that, and we have him to demonstration. It
is like a proposition of Euclid."

"You think that is certain?" said Barker, anxious, but dominated
delightfully.

"I'll tell you what I think," said Buck, getting up jovially. "I
think Adam Wayne made an uncommonly spirited little fight; and I think
I am confoundedly sorry for him."

"Buck, you are a great man!" cried Barker, rising also. "You've
knocked me sensible again. I am ashamed to say it, but I was getting
romantic. Of course, what you say is adamantine sense. Fighting, being
physical, must be mathematical. We were beaten because we were neither
mathematical nor physical nor anything else--because we deserved to be
beaten. Hold all the approaches, and with our force we must have him.
When shall we open the next campaign?"

"Now," said Buck, and walked out of the bar.

"Now!" cried Barker, following him eagerly. "Do you mean now? It is so
late."

Buck turned on him, stamping.

"Do you think fighting is under the Factory Acts?" he said; and he
called a cab. "Notting Hill Gate Station," he said; and the two drove
off.

* * * * *

A genuine reputation can sometimes be made in an hour. Buck, in the
next sixty or eighty minutes, showed himself a really great man of
action. His cab carried him like a thunderbolt from the King to
Wilson, from Wilson to Swindon, from Swindon to Barker again; if his
course was jagged, it had the jaggedness of the lightning. Only two
things he carried with him--his inevitable c