right. Warboise's action had been inopportune,
offensive, needlessly hurting a kindly heart. But the Master, while
indignant with Warboise, could not help feeling just a reflex touch
of vexation with Mr. Colt. The Chaplain no doubt was a stalwart
soldier, fighting the Church's battle; but her battle was not to be
won, her rolling tide of conquest not to be set going, in such a
backwater as St. Hospital. Confound the fellow! Why could not these
young men leave old men alone?

Thus it happened that the Master, immersed in painful thoughts,
missed the launching of the Great Idea, which was to trouble him and
indeed all Merchester until Merchester had done with it.

The idea was Mr. Bamberger's.

("Why, of course it was," said Brother Copas later; "ideas, good and
bad, are the mission of his race among the Gentiles.")

Mr. Bamberger, having taken his seat, tucked a corner of his
dinner-napkin between his collar and the front of his hairy throat.
Adaptable in most things, in feeding and in the conduct of a napkin
he could never subdue old habit to our English custom, and to-day,
moreover, he wore a large white waistcoat, which needed protection.
This seen to, he gazed around expansively.

"A picture, by George!"--Mr. Bamberger ever swore by our English
patron saint. "Slap out of the Middle Ages, and priceless."

(He actually said "thlap" and "pritheless," but I resign at the
outset any attempt to spell as Mr. Bamberger pronounced.)

"--Authentic, too! To think of this sort of thing taking place
to-day in Merchester, England's ancient capital. Eh, Master?
Eh, Mr. Mayor?"

Master Blanchminster awoke so far out of his thoughts as to correct
the idiom.

"Undoubtedly Merchester was the capital of England before London
could claim that honour."

"Aye," agreed his Worship, "there's no end of antikities in
Merchester, for them as takes an interest in such. Dead-and-alive
you may call us; but, as I've told the Council more than once,
they're links with the past in a manner of speaking."

"But these antiquities attract visitors, or ought to."

"They do: a goodish number, as I've told the Council more than once."

"Why shouldn't they attract more?"

"I suppose they would, if we had more of 'em," answered his Worship
thoughtfully. "When I said just now that we had no end of
antikities, it was in a manner of speaking. There's the Cathedral,
of course, and the old Palace--or what's left of it, and St. Hospi