He stoked himself for ten minutes without a word. Then, without a word, his face fell forward. The Clergyman had him by one already limp arm and steered him to a couch, where he dropped and snored. No one took the trouble to turn around. “Is that usual too?” I asked. “Why not?” said the Clergyman. “I’m on duty to-night to wake them for their trains. They do not respect the Cloth on those occasions.” He turned his broad back on me and continued his discussion with a Brother from Aberdeen by way of Mitylene where, in the intervals of mine-sweeping, he had evolved a complete theory of the Revelations of St. John the Divine in the Island of Patmos. I fell into the hands of a Sergeant-Instructor of Machine Guns--by profession a designer of ladies’ dresses. He told me that Englishwomen as a class “lose on their corsets what they make on their clothes,” and that “Satan himself can’t save a woman who wears thirty-shilling corsets under a thirty-guinea costume.” Here, to my grief, he was buttonholed by a zealous Lieutenant of his own branch, and became a Sergeant again all in one click. I drifted back and forth, studying the prints on the walls and the Masonic collection in the cases, while I listened to the inconceivable talk all round me. Little by little the company thinned, till at last there were only a dozen or so of us left. We gathered at the end of a table near the fire, the night-bird from Flanders trumpeting lustily into the hollow of his helmet, which some one had tipped over his face. “And how did it go with you?” said the Doctor. “It was like a new world,” I answered. “That’s what it _is_ really.” Brother Burges returned the gold pince-nez to their case and reshipped his silver spectacles. “Or that’s what it might be made with a little trouble. When I think of the possibilities of the Craft at this juncture I wonder----” He stared into the fire. “I wonder, too,” said the Sergeant-Major slowly, “but--on the whole--I’m inclined to agree with you. We could do much with Masonry.” “As an aid--as an aid--not as a substitute for Religion,” the Clergyman snapped. “Oh, Lord! Can’t we give Religion a rest for a bit,” the Doctor muttered. “It hasn’t done so--I beg your pardon all around.” The Clergyman was bristling. “Kamerad!” the wise Sergeant-Major went on, both hands up. “Certainly not as a substitute for a creed, but as an average plan of life. What I’ve seen at the front makes me sure of it.” Brother Burges came out of his muse. “There ought to be a dozen--twenty--other Lodges in London every night; conferring degrees too, as well as instruction. Why shouldn’t the young men join? They practise what we’re always preaching. Well! Well! We must all do what we can. What’s the use of old Masons if they can’t give a little help along their own lines?” “Exactly,” said the Sergeant-Major, turning on the Doctor. “And what’s the darn use of a Brother if he isn’t allowed to help?”