e.
"You see, these people were much too tired and weak even to join the
social war. They were a definite hindrance to it."

"And so you are simply burning them out?"

"It _does_ seem absurdly simple," said the man, with a beaming smile,
"when one thinks of all the worry and talk about helping a hopeless
slave population, when the future obviously was only crying to be rid of
them. There are happy babes unborn ready to burst the doors when these
drivellers are swept away."

"Will you permit me to say," said Turnbull, after reflection, "that I
don't like all this?"

"And will you permit me to say," said the other, with a snap, "that I
don't like Mr. Evan MacIan?"

Somewhat to the speaker's surprise this did not inflame the sensitive
sceptic; he had the air of thinking thoroughly, and then he said: "No, I
don't think it's my friend MacIan that taught me that. I think I should
always have said that I don't like this. These people have rights."

"Rights!" repeated the unknown in a tone quite indescribable. Then he
added with a more open sneer: "Perhaps they also have souls."

"They have lives!" said Turnbull, sternly; "that is quite enough for me.
I understood you to say that you thought life sacred."

"Yes, indeed!" cried his mentor with a sort of idealistic animation.
"Yes, indeed! Life is sacred--but lives are not sacred. We are improving
Life by removing lives. Can you, as a free-thinker, find any fault in
that?"

"Yes," said Turnbull with brevity.

"Yet you applaud tyrannicide," said the stranger with rationalistic
gaiety. "How inconsistent! It really comes to this: You approve of
taking away life from those to whom it is a triumph and a pleasure.
But you will not take away life from those to whom it is a burden and a
toil."

Turnbull rose to his feet in the car with considerable deliberation, but
his face seemed oddly pale. The other went on with enthusiasm.

"Life, yes, Life is indeed sacred!" he cried; "but new lives for old!
Good lives for bad! On that very place where now there sprawls one
drunken wastrel of a pavement artist more or less wishing he were
dead--on that very spot there shall in the future be living pictures;
there shall be golden girls and boys leaping in the sun."

Turnbull, still standing up, opened his lips. "Will you put me down,
please?" he said, quite calmly, like on stopping an omnibus.

"Put you down--what do you mean?" cried his leader. "I am taking you to
the front of the