“I am glad to say that I stopped within my first five steps, and let loose my just reprobation, balancing myself as best I could all the time.
“‘It’s a right-of-way,’ declared my indefensible informant. ‘It’s closed to traffic once in a hundred years.’
“‘Mr. Percy, Mr. Percy!’ I called out; ‘you are not going on with this blackguard?’
“‘Why, I think so,’ answered my unhappy colleague flippantly. ‘I think you and I are bigger blackguards than he is, whatever he is.’
“‘I am a burglar,’ explained the big creature quite calmly. ‘I am a member of the Fabian Society. I take back the wealth stolen by the capitalist, not by sweeping civil war and revolution, but by reform fitted to the special occasion—here a little and there a little. Do you see that fifth house along the terrace with the flat roof? I’m permeating that one to-night.’
“‘Whether this is a crime or a joke,’ I cried, ‘I desire to be quit of it.’
“‘The ladder is just behind you,’ answered the creature with horrible courtesy; ‘and, before you go, do let me give you my card.’
“If I had had the presence of mind to show any proper spirit I should have flung it away, though any adequate gesture of the kind would have gravely affected my equilibrium upon the wall. As it was, in the wildness of the moment, I put it in my waistcoat pocket, and, picking my way back by wall and ladder, landed in the respectable streets once more. Not before, however, I had seen with my own eyes the two awful and lamentable facts— that the burglar was climbing up a slanting roof towards the chimneys, and that Raymond Percy (a priest of God and, what was worse, a gentleman) was crawling up after him. I have never seen either of them since that day.
“In consequence of this soul-searching experience I severed my connection with the wild set. I am far from saying that every member of the Christian Social Union must necessarily be a burglar. I have no right to bring any such charge. But it gave me a hint of what such courses may lead to in many cases; and I saw them no more.
“I have only to add that the photograph you enclose, taken by a Mr. Inglewood, is undoubtedly that of the burglar in question. When I got home that night I looked at his card, and he was inscribed there under the name of Innocent Smith.—Yours faithfully,