While I was waiting my anger gradually cooled and I began to see that Lalage was perfectly right in saying that I should suffer most if the Archdeacon came to our rescue. The story of the champagne in the bag would leak out at once. The Archdeacon, as I recollected, already suspected me of intemperance. When he heard that I was drinking secretly and keeping a private supply of wine he would be greatly shocked and would probably feel that it was his duty to act firmly. He would, almost certainly, hold a consultation with McMeekin. McMeekin is just the sort of man to resent anything in the way of a professional slight from one of his patients. Goaded on by the Archdeacon he would invent some horrible punishment for me. In mediaeval times, so I am given to understand, the clergy tortured people, in cells, for the good of their souls, and any one who had a private enemy denounced him to the Grand Inquisitor. Faith has nowadays given way before the assaults of science and it is the doctors who possess the powers of the rack. Instead of being suspected of heresy a man is now accused of having an abscess on his appendix. His doom is much the same, to have his stomach cut open with knives, though the name given to it is different. It is now called an operation. The older term, rather more expressive, was disembowelling. Four hundred years ago McMeekin, if he had a grievance against me, would have denounced me to the Archdeacon. Now, things have changed so far that it is the Archdeacon who denounces me to McMeekin. The result for me is much the same. I do not suppose that my case would either then or now be one for extreme penalties. I am not the stuff of which obstinate heretics are made, nor have I any heroic tumour which would render me liable to the knife. Slow starvation, a diet of barley water, beef tea, and milk puddings, would meet the requirements of my case. But I did not want any more barley water and beef tea. I have always, from my childhood up, hated milk puddings. I thought over my position carefully and by the time the first sheet of my letter to the Archdeacon was dry, I had arrived at the conclusion that I had better not go on with it. I burned it.