is new friend with a snort of scorn. "So you talk
about mobs and the working classes as if they were the question. You've
got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from
the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never
been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being
some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country.
The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor
have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always
objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists,
as you can see from the barons' wars."

"As a lecture on English history for the little ones," said Syme, "this
is all very nice; but I have not yet grasped its application."

"Its application is," said his informant, "that most of old Sunday's
right-hand men are South African and American millionaires. That is why
he has got hold of all the communications; and that is why the last four
champions of the anti-anarchist police force are running through a wood
like rabbits."

"Millionaires I can understand," said Syme thoughtfully, "they are
nearly all mad. But getting hold of a few wicked old gentlemen with
hobbies is one thing; getting hold of great Christian nations is
another. I would bet the nose off my face (forgive the allusion) that
Sunday would stand perfectly helpless before the task of converting any
ordinary healthy person anywhere."

"Well," said the other, "it rather depends what sort of person you
mean."

"Well, for instance," said Syme, "he could never convert that person,"
and he pointed straight in front of him.

They had come to an open space of sunlight, which seemed to express to
Syme the final return of his own good sense; and in the middle of this
forest clearing was a figure that might well stand for that common
sense in an almost awful actuality. Burnt by the sun and stained with
perspiration, and grave with the bottomless gravity of small necessary
toils, a heavy French peasant was cutting wood with a hatchet. His cart
stood a few yards off, already half full of timber; and the horse that
cropped the grass was, like his master, valorous but not desperate; like
his master, he was even prosperous, but yet was almost sad. The man was
a Norman, taller than the average of the French and very angular; and
his swarthy figure stood dark against a square of sunlight, almost like
some allego