"Well, yes, if you've got anything sensible to say," said Master Ambrose grudgingly. "Here goes, then! What do you suppose the Law was invented for, Ambrose?" "What was the Law invented for? What are you driving at, Nat? I suppose it was invented to prevent rapine, and robbery, and murder, and all that sort of thing." "But you remember what my father said about the Law being man's substitute for fairy fruit? Fairy things are all of them supposed to be shadowy cheats--delusion. But man can't live without delusion, so he creates for himself another form of delusion--the world-in-law, subject to no other law but the will of man, where man juggles with facts to his heart's content, and says, 'If I choose I shall make a man old enough to be my father my son, and if I choose I shall turn fruit into silk and black into white, for this is the world I have made myself, and here I am master.' And he creates a monster to inhabit it--the man-in-law, who is like a mechanical toy and always behaves exactly as he is expected to behave, and is no more like you and me than are the fairies." For the life of him, Master Ambrose could not suppress a grunt of impatience. But he was a man of his word, so he refrained from further interruption. "Beyond the borders of the world-in-law," continued Master Nathaniel, "that is to say, the world as we choose for our convenience that it should appear, there is delusion--or reality. And the people who live there are as safe from our clutches as if they lived on another planet. No, Ambrose, you needn't purse up your lips like that ... everything I've been saying is to be found more or less in my father's writings, and nobody ever thought him fantastic--probably because they never took the trouble to read his books. I must confess I never did myself till just the other day." As he spoke he glanced up at the portrait of the late Master Josiah, taken in the very arm-chair he, Nathaniel, was at that very moment sitting in, and following his son's every movement with a sly, legal smile. No, there had certainly been nothing fantastic about Master Josiah. And yet ... there was something not altogether human about these bright bird-like eyes and that very pointed chin. Had Master Josiah also heard the Note ... and fled from it to the world-in-law?