There was no doubt at all. Either he was mad, or that was the emerald. He remembered some odiously vivid dreams that he had had as a child during the air raids--but he was certain this was no dream. He was McTaggart all right, a miserable young journalist against whom fate had woven some hellish plot; and there was the Emerald. Next he tortured himself as to what he should do; obviously he must keep it upon him; he dared not secrete it anywhere. If one secretes things one can be traced. Conscience for one moment bade him go and tell his host, and risk all; but unfortunately the Angel had been called away at that very moment to tackle the Devil again, who had settled in the Vicarage; and in lack of such heavenly aid McTaggart fell, as any one of us would have fallen. He put the emerald into the inner pocket of his coat, pinned three pins round it carefully to make certain that it should not escape; and then went down with leaden heart to mix with his fellow beings and to trust to time. CHAPTER SIX The boy Ethelbert was suffering; not from contrition--which, I need hardly tell one of your learning, is the pure sorrow for sin--but from attrition--which, I need hardly tell one of your learning, is the sorrow for sin only in so far as one considers its unpleasant consequences to oneself. The boy Ethelbert clearly appreciated that in attempting to save himself from one danger he had run himself into another far greater. He had put a valuable jewel into a nobleman's pocket and that might be, in legal terms, for all he knew, embezzlement, malversation or even a compound and chronic felony of _malice prepense_; perhaps a misdemeanour--with which word he was familiar through the fate of an uncle of his called John. He was in great agony, was the boy Ethelbert; in agony of that sort which youth cannot endure until it has relieved itself by communion. But how should he speak? His duty was to his natural lord, the Butler. The glorious, the remote Mr. Whaley: God of the Underworld. Should he confess to the Butler? It would be madness. Yet he must speak: he must unburden his mind. The innocent child was not long in finding a plan. He would go to his true superior and, naming no names, mentioning no-one-like, he would give a nod as good as a wink to a blind horse, and them as understood could follow if they chose, and if they asked no questions they wouldn't be told no lies. And mum's the word. Such, in rapid succession, were the Napoleonic thoughts of Ethelbert. It was shortly after luncheon that he sought the room in which the dignified O.C. of the household of Paulings was wont to repose from his labours: and never more thoroughly than after luncheon.