“Then something happened, which even those who saw it and survived cannot describe. The dark trees seemed to spring up to twice their height as in a nightmare. In the half-dark the whole wood seemed to rise from the earth like a rush of birds and then to turn over in mid-air and come towards the invaders like a roaring wave. Some such dim and dizzy sight they saw; but many of them at least saw little enough afterwards. Simultaneously with the turning of this wheel of waving trees, rocks seemed to rain down out of heaven; beams and stones and shafts and missiles of all kinds, flattening out the advancing force as under a pavement produced by a shower of paving-stones. It is asserted that some of the countrymen cunning in woodcraft, in the service of the Long Bow, had contrived to fit up a tree as a colossal catapult; calculating how to bend back the boughs and sometimes even the trunks to the breaking-point, and gaining a huge and living resilience with their release. If this story is true, it is certainly an appropriate conclusion to the career of the Long Bow and a rather curious fulfilment of the visionary vaunt of Parson White when he said that the bows would be big enough for giants, and that the maker of the bows was God.” “Yes,” interrupted the excitable White, “and do you know what he said to me when I first said it?” “What who said when you said what?” asked Hood patiently. “I mean that fellow Hunter,” replied the clergyman. “That varnished society doctor turned politician. Do you know what he said when I told him we would get our bows from God?” Owen Hood paused in the act of lighting a cigar. “Yes,” he said grimly. “I believe I can tell you exactly what he said. I’ve watched him off and on for twenty years. I bet he began by saying: ‘I don’t profess to be a religious man.’” “Right, quite right,” cried the cleric bounding upon his chair in a joyous manner, “that’s exactly how he began. ‘I don’t profess to be a religious man, but I trust I have some reverence and good taste. I don’t drag religion into politics.’ And I said: ‘No, I don’t think you do.’” A moment after, he bounded, as it were, in a new direction. “And that reminds me of what I came about,” he cried. “Enoch Oates, your American friend, drags religion into politics all right; only it’s a rather American sort of religion. He’s talking about a United States of Europe and wants to introduce you to a Lithuanian Prophet. It seems this Lithuanian party has started a movement for a Universal Peasant Republic or World State of Workers on the Land; but at present he’s only got as far as Lithuania. But he seems inclined to pick up England on the way, after the unexpected success of the English agrarian party.” “What’s the good of talking to me about a World State,” growled Hood. “Didn’t I say I preferred a Heptarchy?”