“It stood us,” said Brother Lemming, his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, “an appreciable sum of money when we built it in 1906, even with what Brother Anstruther--he was our contractor--cheated himself out of. By the way, that ashlar there is pure Carrara, he tells me. I don’t understand marbles myself. Since then I expect we’ve put in--oh, quite another little sum. Now we’ll go to the examination-room and take on the Brethren.” He led me back, not to the ante-room, but a convenient chamber flanked with what looked like confessional-boxes (I found out later that that was what they had been, when first picked up for a song near Oswestry). A few men in uniform were waiting at the far end. “That’s only the head of the procession. The rest are in the ante-room,” said an officer of the Lodge. Brother Burges assigned me my discreet box, saying: “Don’t be surprised. They come all shapes.” “Shapes” was not a bad description, for my first penitent was all head-bandages--escaped from an Officers’ Hospital, Pentonville way. He asked me in profane Scots how I expected a man with only six teeth and half a lower lip to speak to any purpose, so we compromised on the signs. The next--a New Zealander from Taranaki--reversed the process, for he was one-armed, and that in a sling. I mistrusted an enormous Sergeant-Major of Heavy Artillery, who struck me as much too glib, so I sent him on to Brother Lemming in the next box, who discovered he was a Past District Grand Officer. My last man nearly broke me down altogether. Everything seemed to have gone from him. “I don’t blame yer,” he gulped at last. “I wouldn’t pass my own self on my answers, but I give yer my word that so far as I’ve had any religion, it’s been all the religion I’ve had. For God’s sake, let me sit in Lodge again, Brother!” When the examinations were ended, a Lodge Officer came round with our aprons--no tinsel or silver-gilt confections, but heavily-corded silk with tassels and--where a man could prove he was entitled to them--levels, of decent plate. Some one in front of me tightened a belt on a stiffly silent person in civil clothes with discharge-badge. “’Strewth! This is comfort again,” I heard him say. The companion nodded. The man went on suddenly: “Here! What’re you doing? Leave off! You promised not to! Chuck it!” and dabbed at his companion’s streaming eyes. “Let him leak,” said an Australian signaller. “Can’t you see how happy the beggar is?” It appeared that the silent Brother was a “shell-shocker” whom Brother Lemming had passed, on the guarantee of his friend and--what moved Lemming more--the threat that, were he refused, he would have fits from pure disappointment. So the “shocker” went happily and silently among Brethren evidently accustomed to these displays.