ight.'"

"Yes," cried Bob, "but----"

"I really cannot stay any longer now," interrupted the Professor, and
he slipped away, leaving Bob alone.

CHAPTER X

The next day Bob was in London. He had engaged chambers in the Temple
in order to prepare for his examinations. In spite of what he had said
to Professor Renthall, his old opinions remained unshaken. It might be
right, it undoubtedly was right, to defend the weak against brutal
strength in the way he had done, but war between nations was different.
He simply could not participate in it.

He had been stigmatised as a coward, and as a traitor to his country,
but still he must be true to his conscience.

Law and order were different from the arbitrament of the sword. War
was a violation of all that was best and noblest in humanity, and he
must walk along the lines he had marked out.

Still he could not get away from the spirit of the times. The one
subject talked about in restaurants, in clubs, in offices, and in the
streets was this bloody carnage which was convulsing Europe. Almost
every vehicle that passed was placarded with a call to war. Every
newspaper he opened was full of news of the war. Even the religious
papers seemed to have forgotten that the Gospel of Christ was the
Gospel of Peace.

It was true that here and there were letters from correspondents
protesting against the whole horrible business, but these were in the
main, at a discount.

After he had been in London a few days, he happened to get hold of a
German newspaper, and there he read the German side of the question.
This newspaper pleaded that the Kaiser never wanted war. That he had
struggled against war, and that during the whole of his reign, war had
been kept at arm's length. If the Kaiser loved war, the paper urged,
the country would not have remained at peace so long, seeing that never
since 1870 had Germany drawn the sword. Now that war was forced upon
them, the people were only doing what they were obliged to do.

One evening he dined at a small hotel, and, having found his way to the
smoke-room after dinner, he met a man from Cornwall with whom he was
slightly acquainted.

They talked about other things at first, but were eventually led to the
one subject of the times.

"Do you know," said the man from Cornwall, Richards by name, "that I
heard a strange story the other day?"

"What story?"

"A man with whom I am acquainted, a financier from Alsace, told m