going on."

"If the people have got rifles," I said, "they're not likely to give
them up because you and Babberly tell them to."

"Babberly says there's nothing in it," said Moyne, doubtfully, "and
her ladyship agrees with him. She thinks it's simply a dodge of the
Government to spike our guns."

It is curious that Moyne cannot help talking about guns, even when
he's afraid that somebody or other may really have one. He might,
under the circumstances, have been expected to use some other
metaphor. "Cook our goose," for instance, would have expressed his
meaning quite well, and there would have been no suggestion of
gunpowder about the words.

"I don't see," I said, "how you can very well do anything when both
Lady Moyne and Babberly are against you."

"I can't--I can't, of course. And yet, don't you know, Kilmore, I
don't know--"

I quite appreciated Moyne's condition of mind. I myself did not know.
I felt nearly certain that Bob Power had been importing arms in the
_Finola_. I suspected that Crossan and others had been distributing
them. And yet it seemed impossible to suppose that ordinary people,
the men I lunched with in the club, like Malcolmson, the men who
touched their hats to me on the road, like Rose's freckly-faced lover,
the quiet-looking people whom I saw at railway stations, that those
people actually meant to shoot off bullets out of guns with the
intention of killing other people. Of course, long ago, this sort of
killing was done, but then, long ago, men believed things which we do
not believe now. Perhaps I ought to say which I do not believe now.
Malcolmson may still believe in what he calls "civil and religious
liberty." Crossan certainly applies his favourite epithet to the
"Papishes." He may conceivably think that they would put him on a rack
if they got the chance. If he believed that he might fight. And yet
the absurdity of the thing prevents serious consideration.

The fact is that our minds are so thoroughly attuned to the
commonplace that we have lost the faculty of imaginative vision of
unusual things. Commonplace men--I, for instance, or Babberly--can
imagine a defeat of the Liberal Government or a Unionist victory at
the General Election, because Liberal Governments have been defeated
and Unionist victories have been won within our own memories. We
cannot imagine that Malcolmson and Crossan and our large Dean would
march out and kill people, because we have never known any one who