en in the
quietest times, to be flippant with Crossan. On a night like that and
under the existing circumstances, Bland might very well have been
knocked on the head for his joke if I had not come to his rescue.

"Crossan," I said, "don't make a fuss. Mr. Bland and I are simply
taking a walk round the streets."

"If he's a Papist," said Crossan, "he'll have to go home to his bed.
Them's my orders. We don't want rioting in the streets to-night."

I turned to Bland.

"What is your religion?" I asked.

"Haven't any," he said. "I haven't believed any doctrine taught by any
Church since I was six years old. Will that satisfy you?"

"I was afeard," said Crossan, "that you might be a Papist. You can go
on."

This shows, I think, that the charges of bigotry and intolerance
brought against our Northern Protestants are quite unfounded. Crossan
had no wish to persecute even a professed atheist.

We did not go very far though we were out for nearly two hours. The
streets were filled with armed men and everybody we met challenged
us. The police were the hardest to get rid of. They were no doubt
soured by the treatment they received in Belfast. Accustomed to be
regarded with awe by rural malefactors and denounced in flaming
periods, of a kind highly gratifying to their self-importance, by
political leaders, they could not understand a people who did not
mention them in speeches but threatened their lives with paving
stones. This had been their previous experience of Belfast and they
were naturally suspicious of any stray wayfarers whom they met. They
were not impressed when Bland said he was a newspaper reporter. They
did not seem to care whether he believed or disbelieved the Apostles'
Creed. One party of them actually arrested us and only a ready lie of
Bland's saved us from spending an uncomfortable night. He said, to my
absolute amazement, that we were officials of an exalted kind, sent
down by the Local Government Board to hold a sworn inquiry into the
condition of Belfast. This struck me at the time as an outrageously
silly story, but it was really a rather good one to tell. The Irish
police are accustomed to sworn inquiries as one of the last resorts of
harassed Governments. It seemed to the sergeant quite natural that
somebody should be in Belfast to hold one.

We came across McConkey with his machine gun at a street corner. He
had got a new crew to pull it along. I suppose the first men were
utterly exhausted. Bu