"Not a bit of it," replied the Colonel. "He's far too busy holding up recruiting in Ulster while he haggles for his terms, to do anything so patriotic."
"Besides why should he?" interposed a harsh and jeering voice. "Treason's all right if you're rich and powerful. Jim Larkin got six months a year ago for sedition and inciting to violence. What'll these chaps get for provoking the greatest war that ever was or will be? I'll tell ye, Fat jobs. Where'll they be at the end of the war? under the sod alongside the millions of innocent men who've had to pay the price of their mistakes? No fear! They'll be boolgin money, oozin smiles, fat with power, and big-bellied wi feedin on the carcases of better men."
It was Joe Burt who had come up with Mr. Geddes.
The Colonel, giving his shoulder to the engineer, turned to the tall minister, who was stiff, a little self-conscious, and very grave.
Possessed of a far deeper mind than Mr. Pigott, Mr. Geddes was still haunted by doubts. Were we wholly in the right?
The Colonel, intuitive as a girl, recognised the other's distress, and guessed the cause of it.
"Well, Mr. Geddes," he said gently. "Evil has triumphed for the moment at least."
"Yes," replied the other. "Liebknecht's shot, they say."
"All honour to him!" said the Colonel. "He was the one man of the lot who stood to his guns when the pinch came. All the rest of the Social Democrats stampeded at the first shot."
Joe Burt edged up again. Like Mr. Pigott he had made his decision irrevocably and far sooner than the old Nonconformist; but there was a vengeful background still to his thoughts. He refused to forget.