is getting soft in the head." "I know," said the person
addressed. "His mind is no good. He stopped me the other day to say how
sorry he was to hear about my brother's illness. I could see from the
way he spoke that his brain is getting feeble. He's losing his grip. He
was speaking of how kind people had been to him after his accident and
there were tears in his eyes. I think he's getting batty."

Nor were even these things the most momentous happenings of the period.
For as winter slowly changed to early spring it became known that
something of great portent was under way. It was rumoured that the
trustees of St. Asaph's Church were putting their heads together. This
was striking news. The last time that the head of Mr. Lucullus Fyshe,
for example, had been placed side by side with that of Mr. Newberry,
there had resulted a merger of four soda-water companies, bringing what
was called industrial peace over an area as big as Texas and raising
the price of soda by three peaceful cents per bottle. And the last time
that Mr. Furlong senior's head had been laid side by side with those of
Mr. Rasselyer-Brown and Mr. Skinyer, they had practically saved the
country from the horrors of a coal famine by the simple process of
raising the price of nut coal seventy-five cents a ton and thus
guaranteeing its abundance.

Naturally, therefore, when it became known that such redoubtable heads
as those of the trustees and the underlying mortgagees of St. Asaph's
were being put together, it was fully expected that some important
development would follow. It was not accurately known from which of the
assembled heads first proceeded the great idea which was presently to
solve the difficulties of the church. It may well have come from that
of Mr. Lucullus Fyshe. Certainly a head which had brought peace out of
civil war in the hardware business by amalgamating ten rival stores and
had saved the very lives of five hundred employees by reducing their
wages fourteen per cent, was capable of it.

At any rate it was Mr. Fyshe who first gave the idea a definite
utterance.

"It's the only thing, Furlong," he said, across the lunch table at the
Mausoleum Club. "It's the one solution. The two churches can't live
under the present conditions of competition. We have here practically
the same situation as we had with two rum distilleries--the output is
too large for the demand. One or both of the two concerns must go
under. It's their turn just now