poetry of summer, the story of the hedges
and the fields, of orchards shot through with the voices of birds, of
cattle knee-deep in cool water where the dragon-flies keep up their
eternal dance to the flute-like ripple of the river amidst the reeds.

Pugin, his book upon his knees, was enjoying these pictures of summer
woven by perfume, when a servant entered and handed him Adams's card and
the letter of introduction written by Sabatier.

He ordered the visitor to be shown in. Adams, when he entered, found
himself before a small man with a big head; an ugly little man, with a
look of kindness and a very gracious and charming manner.

To Pugin Adams seemed a giant. A giant bronzed by unknown suns, talking
French indifferently well, and with a foreign accent. An interesting
person, indeed, but a being quite beyond his range of knowledge.

Pugin, in physical matters, was timid as a rabbit. He had never travelled
farther than Trouville or Ostend, and when he indicated a chair, and when
these two sat down to talk to each other, the mastiff-man felt
instinctively the presence of the rabbit-man, and was at a loss how to
begin.

Not for long, though. Bluffly, and with little grace enough, but with
earnestness and a cunning one would never have suspected, he told of
Maxine's great admiration for the author's work, and how she had suggested
the enlistment of the said author in the crusade against crime which he,
Adams, was endeavouring to raise.

Pugin listened, making little bows, sniffing the lettuce which the
mastiff-man had so cunningly placed before his nose.

Then honestly and plainly and well, Adams told his tale, and the rabbit
held up its hands in horror at the black doings disclosed to it. But it
was horror divorced from sentiment. Pugin felt almost as great a revulsion
toward the negroes upon whom these things were done as toward the doers.

He could not see the vast drama in its true proportions and its poetical
setting of forest, plain, and sky. The outlandish names revolted him; he
could not see Yandjali and its heat-stricken palms or M'Bassa burning in
the sun.

But he listened politely and it was this that chilled the heart of the
story-teller who instinctively felt that though he had shocked his hearer,
he had not aroused that high spirit of revolt against injustice which
converts a man into a living trumpet, a living axe, or a living sword.

Pugin would have been a great force could his sentiment have