His garage was empty; his car in little request; he had few repairs. Old Town at one end of Beachbourne and Holywell on the foot-hills under Beau-nez at the other were the quarters of the resident aristocracy amongst whom it was the convention to avoid "the front" as bad form. These clung to their sleek pairs and cockaded coachmen just as they clung to the Church and Joseph Chamberlain and the belief, so often re-affirmed by Archdeacon Willcocks, that Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany was the one man living who knew how to rule the masses. _The firm hand, sir!_ The doctors, on the other hand, were beginning to possess little cars of their own which they drove themselves or had driven for them; while the progressive Town Council started motor buses and deprived Alf of some station-work. Mr. Pigott, now a radical alderman, was responsible for this last injustice. Alf knew it, and in revenge, ceased to attend chapel. Mr. Pigott, with an unerring eye for the defaulters of his flock, marked his absence and tackled the lost sheep on the subject. "You've given up God then!" he said, fierce and frowning. "There ain't none," answered Alf, as brief and brutal. "Where there's no justice, there can't be no God." His little eyes sparkled dreadfully. "Look at young Albert Hewson. He went through the shops with me. Is he as good an engineer as me?--Can he strip an engine same as me?--Can he turn to the thousandth part of an inch?--Ask the chaps in the yard. Yet because he's got all the money, been to Rugby and Oxford, they make him deputy-chairman of the Red Cross Syndicate at £1,000 a year straight from the shop, and Managing Director of Ball-Bearings, Limited, and I don't know what all." He became a violent Socialist; spent his Sundays attending Labour demonstrations in the East-end; read Robert Blatchford in the _Clarion_; and sulked with his mother. For a moment he even contemplated the abandonment of his ambitions. When Mr. Pigott, after his second marriage, finally gave up schoolmastering and became Manager of the Southdown Transport Company, Alf applied for the position of working foreman. The application was discussed at a meeting of the Directors. "He's the chap that made the wage-slave speech to the Engineers at the Salvation Army Citadel on Labour Day," said one. "What d'_you_ think, Pigott?" asked another. "I won't have Alf Caspar in my yard," replied the Manager with characteristic emphasis. "I know Alf." "Then that settles it," said the chairman. Alf rightly attributed his defeat to his old schoolmaster. "So you've turned me down, Mr. Pigott," he said, stopping the other in Church Street a few days later. Mr. Pigott, like most professing pacifists, was always ready for a fight. "I thought you wanted to be a master-man!" he cried. "And here you're applying for a job as a wage-slave--to use your own term." Alf was white, trembling, and sour-faced.