"They ain't got it all their own way, then," he said, grimly. "I see the Irish Guards turned out and lined the rails and cheered Redmond as he came down Birdcage Walk back from the Conference." "I don't like it," replied the Colonel gloomily. "Rotten discipline. The Army has no politics." "What about the officers at the Curragh?" asked Ernie almost aggressively. "They begun it. Give the men a chance too." "Two wrong things don't make a right," retorted the Colonel sharply. Ernie got down at the station without a word. Was it an accident the Colonel, sensitive as a girl, asked himself? was it a deliberate affront? What was the world coming to? That man an old Hammer-man! One of Bobby Bermondsey yahoos wouldn't treat him so! Indeed the avalanche was now sliding gradually down the mountain-side, gathering way as it went, to overwhelm the smiling villages sleeping peacefully in the valley. Next day oppressed by imminent catastrophe, the Colonel, climbing Beau-nez in the afternoon to take up his habitual post of vigil by the flag-staff, found Joe Burt and Mr. Geddes already there. Both men, he marked, greeted him almost sombrely. "It looks to me very serious," he said. "Austria means to go for Serbia, that's clear; and if she does Russia isn't going to stand by and see Serbia swallowed up. What d'you think, Mr. Geddes?" The other answered him on that note of suppressed indignation which characterised increasingly his utterance when he touched on this often discussed subject. "I think Colonel, what I've thought all along," he answered: "that if we're in the eve of a European eruption the attitude of the officers of the British Army is perfectly _inexplicable_." He was firm almost to ferocity. "Hear! hear!" growed Joe. "But they don't know, poor beggars!" cried the Colonel, exasperated yet appealing. He felt as he had felt throughout the controversy that he was fighting with his hands tied behind his back. "Do be just, Mr. Geddes. They are merely the playthings of the politicians. O, if you only knew the regimental officer as I know him! He's like that St. Bernard dog over there by the coast-guard station--the most foolish and faithful creature on God's earth. Smith pats him on the head and tells him he's a good dorg, and he'll straightway beg for the privilege of being allowed to die for Smith. What's a poor ignorant devil of a regimental officer quartered at Aldershot or the Curragh or Salisbury Plain likely to know of the European situation?" The tall minister was not to be appeased.