ther of our proposals; the result is that we run
about dodging the police and have jumped over our garden wall into your
magnificent garden to throw ourselves on your magnificent hospitality."

The face of the old gentleman had grown redder and redder during this
address, but it was still smiling; and when he broke out it was with a
kind of guffaw.

"So you really want to fight with drawn swords in my garden," he asked,
"about whether there is really a God?"

"Why not?" said MacIan, with his simple monstrosity of speech; "all
man's worship began when the Garden of Eden was founded."

"Yes, by----!" said Turnbull, with an oath, "and ended when the
Zoological Gardens were founded."

"In this garden! In my presence!" cried the stranger, stamping up and
down the gravel and choking with laughter, "whether there is a God!"
And he went stamping up and down the garden, making it echo with his
unintelligible laughter. Then he came back to them more composed and
wiping his eyes.

"Why, how small the world is!" he cried at last. "I can settle the whole
matter. Why, I am God!"

And he suddenly began to kick and wave his well-clad legs about the
lawn.

"You are what?" repeated Turnbull, in a tone which is beyond
description.

"Why, God, of course!" answered the other, thoroughly amused. "How
funny it is to think that you have tumbled over a garden wall and fallen
exactly on the right person! You might have gone floundering about in
all sorts of churches and chapels and colleges and schools of philosophy
looking for some evidence of the existence of God. Why, there is no
evidence, except seeing him. And now you've seen him. You've seen him
dance!"

And the obliging old gentleman instantly stood on one leg without
relaxing at all the grave and cultured benignity of his expression.

"I understood that this garden----" began the bewildered MacIan.

"Quite so! Quite so!" said the man on one leg, nodding gravely. "I said
this garden belonged to me and the land outside it. So they do. So does
the country beyond that and the sea beyond that and all the rest of the
earth. So does the moon. So do the sun and stars." And he added, with a
smile of apology: "You see, I'm God."

Turnbull and MacIan looked at him for one moment with a sort of notion
that perhaps he was not too old to be merely playing the fool. But
after staring steadily for an instant Turnbull saw the hard and horrible
earnestness in the man's eyes behind all his