There was nothing for it but the
Force. So here I AM. But give me the wings of a dove, and I'd join
the Royal Flyin' Corps to-morrow, where they get higher pay because
of the risk, same as with the submarines. If you ask _me_, every
Englishman's post at this moment is in the firing line."

Nicky-Nan winced, and changed the subject in haste.

"Well, it must be a great consolation to have such strength as
yours," he said pleasantly. "But I wonder--with nothing else doin',
and on a Bank Holiday too--you could manage to stay away from the
School Treat."

"Rat it all!" broke out the constable, and checked himself.
"I thought I was igsplaining to you," he went on as one who reasons
patiently with an infant, "that a man has to think of something above
an' beyond _self_ in these days."

"I never found time to think out the rights an' wrongs o' warfare,
for my part," said Nicky-Nan.

"Ah, I daresay not." Policeman Rat-it-all blew out his chest.
"It's a deep subject," he added, wagging his head solemnly.
"A very deep subject; and I quite understand your not having time for
it lately. How about that Ejectment Order?"

Nicky-Nan jumped like a man shot. "Ha--have you got the--the thing
about 'ee?" he twittered. "Don't tell me that Pamphlett has got 'em
to send it down? . . . But there, you can't do anything on a Bank
Holiday, anyway."

"Have I got the thing about me?" echoed the policeman slowly. "You
talk as if 'twas a box o' matches. . . . Well, I may, or I mayn't;
but anyways I've followed the case before Petty Sessions; and if you
haven't a leg to stand on, the only thing is to walk out peaceably.
Mind, I'm puttin' it unofficial, as between friends."

"And what if I don't?"

"Then, rat it all!--I mean," the constable corrected himself to a
tolerant smile and gazed down on his mighty hands and arms--"then I
got to put you into the street."

Nicky-Nan leaned on his stick and the stick shook with his
communicated fury. "Try it--try it--try it!" he blazed out.
"Try it, you Bodmin fathead!"

He shuffled away, nodding his head with wrath. He roamed the
cliff-paths for an hour, pausing now and again to lean his back
against an out-cropping mass of rock and pass the back of his hand
across his eyes, that at first were bloodshot with fury. He had a
great desire to kill Policeman Rat-it-all. As his passion died down
and he limped forward, to pause and again limp forward, his gait and
the backward cast of his