"Not a bit of it!" he cried. "That's the one blessed thing about the whole situation. _We've all been wrong_. I believed in the German menace--till a month or two ago. And then...." "That's it," said Mr. Trupp. "We must all swing together, and a good job too. If there's any hanging done Carson and Bonar Law, Asquith and Haldane, Ramsay Macdonald and Snowden ought to grace the same gallows seems to me. And when we've hanged our leaders for letting us in we must hang ourselves for allowing them to let us in." The old surgeon had turned an awkward corner with the gruff tact peculiar to him; and Mr. Pigott at least was grateful to him. "You've heard Carson's committed suicide?" he said. "Shot himself this morning on St. Stephen's Green." "Not a bit of it," replied the Colonel. "He's far too busy holding up recruiting in Ulster while he haggles for his terms, to do anything so patriotic." "Besides why should he?" interposed a harsh and jeering voice. "Treason's all right if you're rich and powerful. Jim Larkin got six months a year ago for sedition and inciting to violence. What'll these chaps get for provoking the greatest war that ever was or will be? I'll tell ye, _Fat jobs_. Where'll they be at the end of the war? under the sod alongside the millions of innocent men who've had to pay the price of their mistakes? No fear! They'll be boolgin money, oozin smiles, fat with power, and big-bellied wi feedin on the carcases of better men." It was Joe Burt who had come up with Mr. Geddes. The Colonel, giving his shoulder to the engineer, turned to the tall minister, who was stiff, a little self-conscious, and very grave. Possessed of a far deeper mind than Mr. Pigott, Mr. Geddes was still haunted by doubts. Were we wholly in the right? The Colonel, intuitive as a girl, recognised the other's distress, and guessed the cause of it. "Well, Mr. Geddes," he said gently. "Evil has triumphed for the moment at least." "Yes," replied the other. "Liebknecht's shot, they say." "All honour to him!" said the Colonel. "He was the one man of the lot who stood to his guns when the pinch came. All the rest of the Social Democrats stampeded at the first shot." Joe Burt edged up again. Like Mr. Pigott he had made his decision irrevocably and far sooner than the old Nonconformist; but there was a vengeful background still to his thoughts. He refused to forget. "I hear the Generals are in uproarious spirits," he said. "One of them," answered the Colonel quietly. "They won't pay the price," continued Joe. "They'll make--trust them. _There's_ the man they'll leave to take the punishment they've brought on the coontry." He nodded to Ernie who was busy with some mates extracting chocolates from a penny-in-the-slot-machine. The Colonel's eye glittered. He had spied Stanley Bessemere doing, indeed over-doing, the hearty amongst the men by the barrier.