"And this," said Katherine, pointing to a long steel thing with a great knob adorned with cruel spikes, "is the family mace, I suppose. I've seen it before, I remember." "Yes, that's the mace." "What a blood-thirsty set of people you must have been!" Austin came up with a laugh. "There's a legend among us that once mother was left alone in the house and insisted on having this mace near her bed so as to defend herself against burglars. But why do you leave me to tell the story, Dick?" Dick clenched his fists, and, muttering something, turned and ascended the gallery above the screen. Viviette followed him. "You're not doing it at all nicely. I don't think you want to." "Can you wonder at that?" he said hoarsely. Viviette played deliciously with the fire. "Why, aren't we intelligent enough for you?" she asked with childish innocence. "You know what I mean." "I haven't the faintest idea. All I know is that you may as well be polite, at any rate." He laughed. Ordinarily he had little sense of humour; but now he had the flames in his heart and the hell in his throat, and red mist before his eyes. "Oh, I'll be polite," he growled. "By God, I'll be polite! One may be suffering the tortures of the damned, but one must smirk and be polite!" He snatched up the first thing to hand, a helmet that stood on a case, and brought it down below the screen. "Katherine, Viviette says I'm not delivering my lecture properly. I beg your pardon. I'm rather shy at first, but I get warmed up to my subject. What would you like to hear about?" Katherine exchanged a glance with Austin. "Don't you think we might put off the rest till another day?" "Yes, old chap. Put it off till to-morrow. It's your birthday, you know." "Birthday? What's that got to do with it? Who knows what may happen between then and now? No--no. I'm all right," he cried wildly. "You're here, and you've got to listen. I'll get into fine form presently. Look!" he said, pointing to the helmet he was holding. "Here is a Cromwellian morion. It was picked up by an ancestor at Naseby. It has a clean cut in it. That's where an honest gentleman's sword found its way into the knave's skull--the puritanical, priggish, canting knave." He threw the helmet with a clatter on to the table as if it had been the knave's canting head. He caught up a weapon.