er glass for the benefit of the
members and their friends.

"Sam, show this gentleman to Mr. Green."

Sam, who was a red-faced child in buttons, with a man's walk and the
back of one who knew as much as most people, obeyed this command, and
ushered the Prophet into a room with a sealing-wax red paper, in which
Robert Green was sitting alone, smoking a large cigar and glancing at
the "stony-broke edition" of an evening paper. He greeted the Prophet
with his usual unaffected cordiality, offered him every drink that had
yet been invented, and, on his refusal of them all, handed him a cigar
and a matchbox, and whistled "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-av" at him in the most
friendly manner possible.

"Bob," said the Prophet, taking a very long time to light the cigar,
"what, in your opinion, is the exact meaning of the term honour?"

Mr. Green's cheerful, though slightly belated, face assumed an
expression of genial betwaddlement.

"Oh, well, Hen," he said, "exact meaning you know's not so easy.
But--hang it, we all understand the thing, eh, without sticking it down
in words. What?"

"I don't, Bob," rejoined the Prophet, in the tone of a man at odds with
several consciences. "In what direction does honour lie?"

"It don't lie at all, old chap," said Mr. Green, with the decided manner
which had made him so universally esteemed in yeomanry circles.

The Prophet began to look very much distressed.

"Look here, Bob, I'll put it in this way," he said. "Would an honourable
man feel bound to keep a promise?"

"Rather."

"Yes, but would he feel bound to keep two promises?"

"Rather, if he'd made 'em."

"Suppose he had!"

"Go ahead, Hen, I'm supposing," said Mr. Green, beginning to pucker
his brows and stare very hard indeed in the endeavour to keep the
supposition fixed firmly in his head.

"And, further, suppose that these two promises were diametrically
opposed to one another."

Mr. Green stuck out one leg, looked obliquely at the carpet, pressed his
lips together and nodded.

"So that if he fulfilled them both he'd have to break them both--"

"Stop a sec! Gad, I've lost it! Start again, Hen!"

"No, I mean so that if he didn't break one he would be forced to break
the other. Have you got that?"

"Stop a bit! Don't believe I have. Let's see!"

He moved his lips silently, repeating the Prophet's words.

"Yes. I've got that all right now," he said, after three minutes of
strenuous mental exertion.

"Well, what would