mandment. He is a great nuisance to _us_, I
admit, and we very properly lock him up if we catch him; but between his
troublesome and unsocial action and evil--Oh, the connexion is of the
weakest.'

It was getting very late. The man who had brought Cotgrave had probably
heard all this before, since he assisted with a bland and judicious
smile, but Cotgrave began to think that his 'lunatic' was turning into a
sage.

'Do you know,' he said, 'you interest me immensely? You think, then,
that we do not understand the real nature of evil?'

'No, I don't think we do. We over-estimate it and we under-estimate it.
We take the very numerous infractions of our social "bye-laws"--the very
necessary and very proper regulations which keep the human company
together--and we get frightened at the prevalence of "sin" and "evil."
But this is really nonsense. Take theft, for example. Have you any
_horror_ at the thought of Robin Hood, of the Highland caterans of the
seventeenth century, of the moss-troopers, of the company promoters of
our day?

'Then, on the other hand, we underrate evil. We attach such an enormous
importance to the "sin" of meddling with our pockets (and our wives)
that we have quite forgotten the awfulness of real sin.'

'And what is sin?' said Cotgrave.

'I think I must reply to your question by another. What would your
feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you,
and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with
horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird
song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to
swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at
night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning?

'Well, these examples may give you some notion of what sin really is.'

'Look here,' said the third man, hitherto placid, 'you two seem pretty
well wound up. But I'm going home. I've missed my tram, and I shall have
to walk.'

Ambrose and Cotgrave seemed to settle down more profoundly when the
other had gone out into the early misty morning and the pale light of
the lamps.

'You astonish me,' said Cotgrave. 'I had never thought of that. If that
is really so, one must turn everything upside down. Then the essence of
sin really is----'

'In the taking of heaven by storm, it seems to me,' said Ambrose. 'It
appears to me that it is simply an attempt to penetrate into another and
higher sphere in a