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The Marquis smiled grimly.

“But it seems to me, my good Johnny, that you missed the whole drift of my long oration. The point is that I dovit want a Devereux for my daughter. Your Miss Crow would be just the same as if I sent her to Bessie, in Bath! The child would run away, I tell you. She'd run away; and elope with her Middlezoy farmer!”

Mr. Geard held his own, obstinately and calmly.

“Well, my Lord, we don't know yet that Miss Crow would be willing to take your daughter. This I do know; that if she is, she would fill the bill ex—actly. I did get all you implied in what you said just now . . . everything . . . and I swear to you that in no single point could you do better than Miss Elizabeth. She is—if you'll allow me to say so—a lady after your own heart, Lord P.”

The Marquis pulled up his chair to the table again and re-filled his own and his guest's wine glass. His fierce, little, blue eyes kept wandering uneasily about the room as if he expected at any moment to learn that Mr. Edward Athling of Middlezoy was waiting to see him.

“Well, Johnny, you go ahead and test your woman out. You know exactly what I want from her. I don't want Rachel separated from Athling. But I don't want her affair with hin: crcu^n^nL What I really want is for Rachel herself to g^t fed uo with ih* bov! If your Miss Crow can catch the nua:i.-e uZ all ihaL rhe certainly is, as you say, a woman after my own hear!.”

The Mayor of Glastonbury had won his little ja;*:e of chess only just in time; for at this moment the door opened and old Bellamy came shuffling in to announce that “Mr. William” had driven over from Wells and was waiting in the Hall.

“Is Lady Rachel with him?”

"Yes, your Lordship/'

"Tell him we'll be down at once/'

It was some three hours later that Mr. Geard and Will Zoy-land, together w*ith Lady Rachel and her father, were drinking tea by the library fire.

The library at Mark's Court was a room very seldom used. Indeed Lord P.'s orders to have the fire lit there this Sunday afternoon were received with sheer indignation by Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy. If the persecuted Sergeant Blimp—who pined for London as a tropical animal pines in a Nordic zoo—had not offered to light the fire himself, it may well be that his lordship's commands would have led to a mutiny in the kitchen. The walls of this room were brown wdth old folios. There were no modern books in these shelves at all. Folios and quartos of every shade of brown and yellow and dirty-white, but principally brown, combined in some of the upper shelves with a few duodecimos, bound in the same manner, presented to Mr. Geard's eye and mind a most curious and almost dreamlike impression.

The presence of these books had a peculiar effect upon him as he sat sipping his tea and listening to these three Zoylands talking of their family affairs. He became suddenly conscious, with a grim exaltation, of the long history of the human race. And he felt as if every movement in that history had been a thing of books and would always be a thing of books! He thought of the great books that have moulded history—books like Plato, Rousseau, Marx—and there came over him an overpowering sense of the dramatic pliancy, suggestibility, malleability, of the masses of human beings.

The three Zoyland heads fell, as he looked at them, and looked past them at those huge shadowy brown shelves, into a symbolic group of human countenances. The high thin brow, big nose and pointed beard of the Marquis, the roving blue eyes and great yellow beard of Will Zoyland, the white face, clustering brown curls and long black eyelashes of the young girl, became to him an allegorical picture, rich with Rembrandt-like chiaroscuro, of the three ages of the journeying human psyche.

Their three extended shadows—with a huge toadlike image of watchful detachment, hovering above them, that was himself— became to him the dreamlike epitome of what those silent, brown-backed creators had projected, had manifested in palpable form, from their teeming Limbo of bodiless archetypes.

It was beginning to become for Bloody Johnny, as he drank cup after cup of strong tea and withdrew more and more into his secret thoughts, one of the great ocean-wave crests of his conscious life. Something seemed pouring through him, a strange, unconquerable magnetic force, pouring through him out of that piled-up mystery of printed matter. He seemed to visualise humanity as a great, turbid stream of tumultuous waters, from the surface of which multitudinous faces, upheaved shoulders, out-flung arms, all vaporous and dim, were tossed forth continually.

And he was standing there with wide-straddled legs and deep-planted feet, armed with a colossal spade. And with this spade he was digging the actual river-bed—the new river-bed—along which this wild, half-elemental, half-human flood was destined to pour!

And there flowed into Mr. Geard's soul, as he gazed at the brown books above the silver candlesticks and above those three Zoyland heads, a feeling of almost unbounded power. He felt as though he possessed, in that invisible, ethereal Being at his side, a fountain of occult force upon which he could draw without stint. He felt that his own personal will—the will of John Geard —was “free” beyond all limitation, beyond all credibility, beyond all expectation. And it was “free” because he had faith in its freedom.

It was extremely distasteful to Mr. Geard when these three Zoylands began to grow aware that they had been neglecting their guest. Lady Rachel was the first to grow conscious of this and she plunged at once into the most dangerous of all common topics just then: the character of Mr. Philip Cruw.

“How do you get on with your boss. Will?” the girl asked during a pause in their talk with a gleam of roguery in her soft, gipsy-like eyes.

'“You won't like it very much, if I tell you e\erythhig I think of Philip Crow,” growled the Bastard in his deep base voice, addressing Mr. Geard point-blank.

“Why should I mind?” murmured Mr. Geard casually. But he began frowning and turning away Ins smouldering black e\es rather awkwardly from the careless blue ones of his adversary.

Like all possessors of magical power, Mr. Geard was liable to be thwarted, baffled, frustrated, nonplussed, by the simplest defiance; whereas with complicated and subtle antagonisms he would be all alert. The shameless candour and rough dog-and-gun manners of Will Zoyland had always rather worried Mr. Geard; not exactly frightened him, but confused and discomfited him.

The Bastard now laughed loudly till his great yellow beard wagged.

“Why should you mind? Lordy! Lordy! but that's funny! It's as though I were watching two great hound-dogs fighting like mad and when I kicked one of 'em with my foot it tried to make out that it was only playing. Why should you mind? Oh, my dear Sir, only because all the county knows that you and Philip Crow are like a bull and a bull-dog!”

“Which is which?'' enquired Lady Rachel. ”I mean which is the bull and which is the dog?'1

Bloody Johnny turned an almost reproachful look towards the girl; as if she had betrayed him by joining in her half-brothers buffoonery.

But Zoyland had worse bolts than that in his arsenal and he was in a mood to use them all. He turned to the Marquis now.

“I think you're a fool, Father,” he said, "if you let our business-like Mayor here entangle you in his grand row with Crow-No, no! hear me out, Father; hear me out! I know very well what old friends you and Mr. Geard are. That's not the point. The point's hard, bed-rock business. The point's politics, Father, local politics; of which, if I may say so, you know very little!

“William's not being offensive :o you. Geard. I hope?” hr-->ke in the Marquis. "If you ar:\ William, I wor/t have it! 1 won'i ha\e thv-se modern ma::r.ei> a: :::y Ica-l^i'te. Lfro yuu hear, ]x>\ :'*

“I doiU think William i:.tam to le rcdt* lo Mr. Geard. Father. I think it was a srt of challenge W- hi:... like those of old dd\sr. Wasn't it, William”? Y :: :>.?! }uu are hound to be faithful to Mr. Crow: isn't it that. Wijliam?"

All three men stared at the young girl. They stared at her with the puckered forehead* of grown people irritated h\ a child's simplicity and with the s:*r^wed-up eyelids of men wondering what a woman was going to say next.

Rachel had managed somehow, in a manner at once feminine and childish, to take the wind out of all their sails. Mr. Geard looked at her with deeip reproach.

The Marquis thought in his heart: “Sensible infant! She won't let Will bulh Johnm. But Johnny's getting touchy. By God, he is! That's where hoi polloi comes out! Doesn't know how to deal with a blunt rascal like our William! Damned if his eyes haven't already got that shifty, resentful, mean look you see in any low-class person when you've kicked his shin or hustled him a bit! Gad! I'd have thought old Johnny was above getting that look!”1'

“It seems to me that Fm doing Mr. Geard a good turn,'* went on Will Zoyland obstinately, ”by telling you what I think about his quarrel with Crow straight to his face rather than waiting till he's gone and can't defend himself. Anyway, Fm one, as you know, Father, for throwing down all the cards."

The Marquis stroked his little pointed beard pensively. The yellow-haired ruffian was evidently a pet of his and held a role in his house, whenever he turned up, parallel to that of the ancient court-jester: only the Zo\land Bastard was more realistic.

4kXo doubt youVe agreed to let him have your name for his Midsummer Fair! No doubt you've agreed to take an interest in his communistic factory! But has it occurred to either of you, either to you. Mr. Mayor, or to you. Father, what this struggle really implies?"*

The Marquis looked sharply at Bloody Johnny who was now rapidly recovering his usual sang-froid.

“Do you want me to shut this lad's mouth9 your Worship?” he «jid with a chuckle. kior shall we MIow i]:? f^-'.J :•:; ,•:“ {*.•¦ 'i ur and give youth its free fling r”

“By all means . . . iU fling,” replied tl:^ Mayvr ni \?]^r,:\-buiy gravely. “Go ahead. Mr. Zoyland! I like }.>jr :un:kiiv^. Til repay it, never fear, when you've had \our r-^y . . . ]:: :h»j same coin, if I can.”

“Bravo. Geard. bravo!” cried my Lord, his little sharp t*ye< glancing with relish from one to the other. He began indeed to assume the expression of a virtuoso at a bear-baiting or a cockfight.

Lady RacheL who knew her father pretty well, began to feel sorry for her rider upon the roan mare. fc“He has no idea how wicked and wilful Father can be!”* she thought.

“'Our wily Mayor here has doubtless already committed you. Father—and you too, Rachel, I'll be bound!—to his precious midsummer antics and to his communistic experiment. All I want to point out, both to him and to you, is simply this/' As he spoke the great yellow-bearded swashbuckler shifted his position in his hard-backed library chair and flung one leather-gaitered leg over its arm. ”Simply this—that you're both on the losing side! Inevitably, by a law of nature impossible to evade, Philip Crow is going to win. No Midsummer Fairs, no rush of tourists to Glas-tonbury from overseas, no municipal factories filled with souvenirs, no bribing of dirty cads like Barter, can prevent Philip Crow from winning. You'll only make an iss of yourself before the whole County, Father, if you go into th's; just as you will, of yourself—if I may say so—Mr. Geard!

"It won't do. You're heading for disaster. This strike that's beginning now, engineered by that little fool of a brother-in-law of mine, will be utterly broken in a month or two. The labouring men of Glastonbury aren't idiots. They'll see, quickly enough, on which side of the bread their butter is.

“Crow has the brains. Crow has the cash. Crow has the banks behind him and the great upper middle class behind him. He has, above everything else, the economic traditions of England behind him. You can't beat Crow, my good Mr. Geard. Hire all the playactors you please; you can't beat him.”

He jerked his leg back, from across his chair arm, and stretched in it straight out by the side of Cm other, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets.

"1*11 tell you a secret. Father: a secret of high politics: and you can make all the use of it you please, my good Mr. Geard! Philip Crow doesn't want Giastonhury flooded with visitors from overseas. Thafs not his taste and I don't blame him. All this demi-semi-religious hocus-pocus doesn't in the end do any good to a town. What does good to a town is to have plenty of work— real work, not this sycophantic, parasitic sponging on visitors, not all this poppycock about the Holy Grail. I tell you I can see the whole thing as clearly as if I were a bloody oracle. You can smile as much as you like. Father: what Fm saying is the truth. This strike in Crow's factories will only hurt the people. Dave Spear's a young idealistic fool—a mere bookish doctrinaire. So are you too, my good Mr. Gsard, if you'll let me say so, with your Midsummer Fairs. Wh^t you've managed to do is simply this. YouVe divided the place into two camps. On your side are all the faddists and the cranks and the soft heads. On Crow's side is hard common sense. And let me tell you that in our old England, even yet, it'll be common sense that'll win!'''

He stopped breathlessly and pouring out all the milk that was left in the milk-jug into the unused slop-basin swallowed it in a couple of gulps.

The Marquis of P. exchanged glances with his daughter. The Mayor of Glastonbury clasped his plump hands on the edge of the table and leant forward as if to speak. Then he changed his mind, unclasped his fingers, and sank back in his chair.

Lady Rachel said: “This new factory of Mr. Geard's is going to manufacture little figures. They are going to be figures of people like Arthur and Merlin. I'd sooner put my faith in these little figures, Will, than in all your common sense!”

William Zoyland emitted a merry laugh.

“Merlin forsooth!” he cried, 6*Well, Rachel, I suppose this is the right place for bringing Merlin in; but Fve never yet heard of the Mayor of any modern town who would pin his faith upon Merlin!“ ”

A long silence fell upon this group of four persons; a silence that was only broken by the crying of ihe wind in the great ehim-nev above their heads. Then the Marquis said:—

“Its all very well for a healthy materialist like you. Will, to scoff at our old superstitions, I've noticed, however, that neither vou nor anyone else I've talked to, who've come to this house, will ever agree to sleep the night in King Mark's Gallery here.”