olate
twilight and drifting sea.

"We are in France!" cried Turnbull, with a voice like a trumpet, "in the
land where things really happen--_Tout arrive en France_. We arrive
in France. Look at this little message," and he held out the scrap of
paper. "There's an omen for you superstitious hill folk. _C'est elle
qui--Mais oui, mais oui, c'est elle qui sauvera encore le monde_."

"France!" repeated MacIan, and his eyes awoke again in his head like
large lamps lighted.

"Yes, France!" said Turnbull, and all the rhetorical part of him came to
the top, his face growing as red as his hair. "France, that has always
been in rebellion for liberty and reason. France, that has always
assailed superstition with the club of Rabelais or the rapier of
Voltaire. France, at whose first council table sits the sublime figure
of Julian the Apostate. France, where a man said only the other day
those splendid unanswerable words"--with a superb gesture--"'we have
extinguished in heaven those lights that men shall never light again.'"

"No," said MacIan, in a voice that shook with a controlled passion. "But
France, which was taught by St. Bernard and led to war by Joan of
Arc. France that made the crusades. France that saved the Church and
scattered the heresies by the mouths of Bossuet and Massillon. France,
which shows today the conquering march of Catholicism, as brain after
brain surrenders to it, Brunetiere, Coppee, Hauptmann, Barres, Bourget,
Lemaitre."

"France!" asserted Turnbull with a sort of rollicking self-exaggeration,
very unusual with him, "France, which is one torrent of splendid
scepticism from Abelard to Anatole France."

"France," said MacIan, "which is one cataract of clear faith from St.
Louis to Our Lady of Lourdes."

"France at least," cried Turnbull, throwing up his sword in schoolboy
triumph, "in which these things are thought about and fought about.
France, where reason and religion clash in one continual tournament.
France, above all, where men understand the pride and passion which have
plucked our blades from their scabbards. Here, at least, we shall not be
chased and spied on by sickly parsons and greasy policemen, because we
wish to put our lives on the game. Courage, my friend, we have come to
the country of honour."

MacIan did not even notice the incongruous phrase "my friend", but
nodding again and again, drew his sword and flung the scabbard far
behind him in the road.

"Yes," he cried, in a voi