“It makes my flesh creep,” replied Crane. “It chills me to the spine. I feel I would rather die than have anything to do with it. But that has nothing to do with my point. I don’t belong to the tribe who wear nose-rings; nor to the tribe who talk through their noses.” “Well, aren’t you a little thankful for that?” asked White. “I’m thankful I can be fair in spite of it,” answered Crane. “When I put a cabbage on my head, I didn’t expect people not to stare at it. And I know that each one of us in a foreign land is a foreigner, and a thing to be stared at.” “What I don’t understand about him,” said Hood, “is the sort of things he doesn’t mind having stared at. How can people tolerate all that vulgar, reeking, gushing commercial cant everywhere? How can a man talk about the Old Fireside? It’s obscene. The police ought to interfere.” “And that’s just where you’re wrong,” said the Colonel. “It’s vulgar enough and mad enough and obscene enough if you like. But it’s not cant. I have travelled amongst these wild tribes, for years on end; and I tell you emphatically it is not cant. And if you want to know, just ask your extraordinary American friend about his own wife and his own relatively Old Fireside. He won’t mind. That’s the extraordinary part of it.” “What does all this really mean, Colonel?” asked Hilary Pierce. “It means, my boy,” answered the Colonel, “that I think you owe our guest an apology.” * * * * * So it came about that there was an epilogue, as there had been a prologue, to the drama of the entrance and exit of Mr. Enoch B. Oates; an epilogue which in its turn became a prologue to the later dramas of the League of the Long Bow. For the words of the Colonel had a certain influence on the Captain, and the actions of the Captain had a certain influence on the American millionaire; and so the whole machinery of events was started afresh by that last movement over the nuts and wine, when Colonel Crane had stirred moodily in his seat and taken his cigar out of his mouth.