is the only Thing there is," answered the other. "It is Force."

"Oh!" said Turnbull shortly.

"Yes, my friends," said the little man, with an animated countenance,
fluttering his fingers in the air, "it was no chance that led you to
this garden; surely it was the caprice of some old god, some happy,
pitiless god. Perhaps it was his will, for he loves blood; and on that
stone in front of him men have been butchered by hundreds in the fierce,
feasting islands of the South. In this cursed, craven place I have
not been permitted to kill men on his altar. Only rabbits and cats,
sometimes."

In the stillness MacIan made a sudden movement, unmeaning apparently,
and then remained rigid.

"But today, today," continued the small man in a shrill voice. "Today
his hour is come. Today his will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
Men, men, men will bleed before him today." And he bit his forefinger in
a kind of fever.

Still, the two duellists stood with their swords as heavily as statues,
and the silence seemed to cool the eccentric and call him back to more
rational speech.

"Perhaps I express myself a little too lyrically," he said with an
amicable abruptness. "My philosophy has its higher ecstasies, but
perhaps you are hardly worked up to them yet. Let us confine ourselves
to the unquestioned. You have found your way, gentlemen, by a beautiful
accident, to the house of the only man in England (probably) who will
favour and encourage your most reasonable project. From Cornwall to Cape
Wrath this county is one horrible, solid block of humanitarianism. You
will find men who will defend this or that war in a distant continent.
They will defend it on the contemptible ground of commerce or the more
contemptible ground of social good. But do not fancy that you will find
one other person who will comprehend a strong man taking the sword in
his hand and wiping out his enemy. My name is Wimpey, Morrice Wimpey. I
had a Fellowship at Magdalen. But I assure you I had to drop it, owing
to my having said something in a public lecture infringing the popular
prejudice against those great gentlemen, the assassins of the Italian
Renaissance. They let me say it at dinner and so on, and seemed to like
it. But in a public lecture...so inconsistent. Well, as I say, here is
your only refuge and temple of honour. Here you can fall back on that
naked and awful arbitration which is the only thing that balances the
stars--a still, continuous viole