"Well, we're roused at last," said the Colonel, as he looked round on that humming scene.
"Yes," answered Mr. Trupp. "It's taken a bash in the face to do it though."
"Should be interesting," commented the Colonel, hiding his emotion behind an air of detachment. "An undisciplined horde of men who believe themselves to be free against a disciplined mass of slaves."
Just then Mr. Pigott approached. The old Nonconformist had about him the air of a boy coming up to the desk to take his punishment. He was at once austere and chastened.
"Well, Colonel," he said. "You were right."
The Colonel took the other's hand warmly.
"Not a bit of it!" he cried. "That's the one blessed thing about the whole situation. We've all been wrong. I believed in the German menace—till a month or two ago. And then...."
"That's it," said Mr. Trupp. "We must all swing together, and a good job too. If there's any hanging done Carson and Bonar Law, Asquith and Haldane, Ramsay Macdonald and Snowden ought to grace the same gallows seems to me. And when we've hanged our leaders for letting us in we must hang ourselves for allowing them to let us in."
The old surgeon had turned an awkward corner with the gruff tact peculiar to him; and Mr. Pigott at least was grateful to him.
"You've heard Carson's committed suicide?" he said. "Shot himself this morning on St. Stephen's Green."