cy from
Purvis; a vibrant protest from Crashaw; a hesitating tenor pronouncement
from Steven.

"Extraordinary powers of memory.... It isn't facts, but what they stand
for that I.... Don't know his Bible--that's good enough for me....
Heresy, heresy.... An astounding memory, of course, quite astounding,
but----"

The simple exposition of each man's theme was dogmatically asserted, and
through it all Challis, standing alone, hardly conscious of each
individual utterance, was still conscious that the spirits of those six
men were united in one thing, had they but known it. Each was
endeavouring to circumscribe the powers of the child they had just
left--each was insistent on some limitation he chose to regard as vital.

They came to no decision that afternoon. The question as to whether the
Authority should prosecute or not had to be referred to the Committee.

At the last, Crashaw entered his protest and announced once more that he
would fight the point to the bitter end.

Crashaw's religious hatred was not, perhaps, altogether free from a
sense of affronted dignity, but it was nevertheless a force to be
counted; and he had that obstinacy of the bigot which has in the past
contributed much fire and food to the pyre of martyrdom. He had, too, a
power of initiative within certain limits. It is true that the bird on a
free wing could avoid him with contemptuous ease, but along his own path
he was a terrifying juggernaut. Crashaw, thus circumscribed, was a
power, a moving force.

But now he was seeking to crush, not some paralysed rabbit on the road,
but an elusive spirit of swiftness which has no name, but may be figured
as the genius of modernity. The thing he sought to obliterate ran ahead
of him with a smiling facility and spat rearwards a vaporous jet of
ridicule.

Crashaw might crush his clerical wideawake over his frowning eyebrows,
arm himself with a slightly dilapidated umbrella, and seek with long,
determined strides the members of the Local Education Authority, but far
ahead of him had run an intelligence that represented the instructed
common sense of modernity.

It was for Crashaw to realise--as he never could and never did
realise--that he was no longer the dominant force of progress; that he
had been outstripped, left toiling and shouting vain words on a road
that had served its purpose, and though it still remained and was used
as a means of travel, was becoming year by year more antiquated and
desp