“Only the pen of a Swift or a Voltaire could do justice to that sublime individual. Here we have a country whose proud boast is that it alone among European states is really free, which is sacrificing its young men by the million in order to overthrow Prussianism, imposing such fetters upon intellectual liberty that one can only gasp.” “Rightly no doubt.” Of late deadly blows had been aimed at the vicar’s mental security, but there was still a kick in the old Adam. “In intellectual matters absolute freedom becomes anarchy, and that would be intolerable, even in a democratic country. The state is bound to devise a means of holding it in check. Of this play I know nothing, nor am I competent to speak of plays in general, but prima facie the government is fully justified in suppressing it. No good thing can come out of Babylon.” “Or in other words out of Wellwood Asylum.” “One does not go quite so far as to say that,” said the vicar thoughtfully. “An interesting admission!” “Which perhaps one oughtn’t to make,” said the vicar rather uneasily. And then, as if a little shocked by his own boldness, he hastened to quit such perilous ground. “To return to stage plays. Things of that kind will not help us to win the war.” “And yet the pen is mightier than the sword.” “That is a dark saying I have never been able to understand. We live not by words but by deeds, and never more so than in this stern time.” “A play may be a great deed.” “If it be sufficiently inspired. But there is much virtue in an ‘if.’” Brandon did not continue the argument. Feeling the ground on which he stood to be impregnable, he could well afford not to do so. Besides it was scarcely the act of a friend to press the vicar too hard in the present amazing circumstances. He was no longer intrenched in self-security. If certain odd changes of manner meant anything, the walls of his little world were falling in, and a perplexed and bewildered Thomas Perry-Hennington was now visible amid the ruins. XLII THE very remarkable news from New York gave Brandon, for the rest of his brief stay at Hart’s Ghyll, a feeling of almost perilous exhilaration. Since his recovery, less than a year ago, his whole life had been a subtle embodiment of the miraculous. And the letter from Urban Meyer had intensified the sense of the miraculous to such a degree, that at first it hardly seemed possible to meet the bald facts of the case in its new aspect and remain perfectly rational. For more years than Brandon cared to count, he had held the cold faith that miracles do not occur; it had now been proved to him, beyond a doubt, that miracles do occur, and he had to face the truth squarely, and yet continue in the work of the world.