Now, if there was one thing more than another upon which the doctor had dwelt in his conversation with me, it was upon the essential law-abidingness, not to say gentleness, of his much-misrepresented country. And yet (truly, it may have been no more than a button that irked him) I saw his hand travel backwards to his right hip, clutch at something, and come away empty. “He won’t kill you,” I said. “He’ll probably sue you in court, if I know my own people. Better give him some money from time to time.” “If he keeps quiet till the stuff gets in its work,” the doctor answered, “I’m all right. If he doesn’t... my name is Emory—Julian B. Emory—193 ’Steenth Street, corner of Madison and—” “I feel worse than I’ve ever felt,” said the navvy, with suddenness. “What-did-you-give-me-the-drink-for?” The matter seemed to be so purely personal that I withdrew to a strategic position on the overhead bridge, and, abiding in the exact centre, looked on from afar. I could see the white road that ran across the shoulder of Salisbury Plain, unshaded for mile after mile, and a dot in the middle distance, the back of the one porter returning to Framlynghame Admiral, if such a place existed, till seven forty-five. The bell of a church invisible clanked softly. There was a rustle in the horse-chestnuts to the left of the line, and the sound of sheep cropping close. The peace of Nirvana lay upon the land, and, brooding in it, my elbow on the warm iron girder of the footbridge (it is a forty-shilling fine to cross by any other means), I perceived, as never before, how the consequences of our acts run eternal through time and through space. If we impinge never so slightly upon the life of a fellow-mortal, the touch of our personality, like the ripple of a stone cast into a pond, widens and widens in unending circles across the aeons, till the far-off Gods themselves cannot say where action ceases. Also, it was I who had silently set before the doctor the tumbler of the first-class lavatory compartment now speeding Plymouthward. Yet I was, in spirit at least, a million leagues removed from that unhappy man of another nationality, who had chosen to thrust an inexpert finger into the workings of an alien life. The machinery was dragging him up and down the sunlit platform. The two men seemed to be learning polka-mazurkas together, and the burden of their song, borne by one deep voice, was: “What did you give me the drink for?” I saw the flash of silver in the doctor’s hand. The navvy took it and pocketed it with his left; but never for an instant did his strong right leave the doctor’s coat-collar, and as the crisis approached, louder and louder rose his bull-like roar: “What did you give me the drink for?”