about
the sacredness of human life; I have bored all my friends with it. Try
and understand our position. This man and I are alone in the modern
world in that we think that God is essentially important. I think He
does not exist; that is where the importance comes in for me. But this
man thinks that He does exist, and thinking that very properly thinks
Him more important than anything else. Now we wish to make a great
demonstration and assertion--something that will set the world on fire
like the first Christian persecutions. If you like, we are attempting
a mutual martyrdom. The papers have posted up every town against us.
Scotland Yard has fortified every police station with our enemies; we
are driven therefore to the edge of a lonely lane, and indirectly to
taking liberties with your summer-house in order to arrange our..."

"Stop!" roared the little man in the butterfly necktie. "Put me out of
my intellectual misery. Are you really the two tomfools I have read of
in all the papers? Are you the two people who wanted to spit each other
in the Police Court? Are you? Are you?"

"Yes," said MacIan, "it began in a Police Court."

The little man slung the bottle of wine twenty yards away like a stone.

"Come up to my place," he said. "I've got better stuff than that. I've
got the best Beaune within fifty miles of here. Come up. You're the very
men I wanted to see."

Even Turnbull, with his typical invulnerability, was a little taken
aback by this boisterous and almost brutal hospitality.

"Why...sir..." he began.

"Come up! Come in!" howled the little man, dancing with delight. "I'll
give you a dinner. I'll give you a bed! I'll give you a green smooth
lawn and your choice of swords and pistols. Why, you fools, I adore
fighting! It's the only good thing in God's world! I've walked about
these damned fields and longed to see somebody cut up and killed and the
blood running. Ha! Ha!"

And he made sudden lunges with his stick at the trunk of a neighbouring
tree so that the ferrule made fierce prints and punctures in the bark.

"Excuse me," said MacIan suddenly with the wide-eyed curiosity of a
child, "excuse me, but..."

"Well?" said the small fighter, brandishing his wooden weapon.

"Excuse me," repeated MacIan, "but was that what you were doing at the
door?"

The little man stared an instant and then said: "Yes," and Turnbull
broke into a guffaw.

"Come on!" cried the little man, tucking his stick under his