fanatical ends now, it takes as much trouble to do one as the other."

"Takes a devilish lot more trouble to do it alone," said Crane. "In the War there was a whole organization."

"You mean he must be more than a remarkable person," suggested Hood, "a sort of giant with a hundred hands or god with a hundred eyes. Well, a man will work frightfully hard when he wants something very much; even a man who generally looks like a lounging minor poet. And I think I know what it was he wanted. He deserves to get it. It's certainly his hour of triumph."

"Mystery to me, all the same," said the Colonel frowning. "Wonder whether he'll ever clear it up." But that part of the mystery was not to be cleared up until many other curious things had come to pass.

Away on another part of the slope Hilary Pierce, new lighted on the earth like the herald Mercury, leapt down into a red hollow of the quarry and came towards Joan Hardy with uplifted arms.

"This is no time for false modesty," he said. "It is the hour, and I come to you covered with glory———"

"You come covered with mud," she said