swered
almost harshly.

"I have enough to make me so, sir--more than enough. I wish to give a
week's notice."

"Been drinking, Robert?" his master enquired.

The man smiled mirthlessly.

"I am quite sober, sir," he answered, "but I should be glad to go at
once. It would be better for both of us."

"What have you against me?" Julian asked, puzzled.

"The lives of my two boys," was the fierce reply. "Fred's gone now--died
in hospital last night. It was you who talked them into soldiering."

Julian's manner changed at once, and his tone became kinder.

"You are very foolish to blame anybody, Robert. Your sons did their
duty. If they hadn't joined up when they did, they would have had to
join as conscripts later on."

"Their duty!" Robert repeated, with smothered scorn. "Their duty to a
squirming nest of cowardly politicians--begging your pardon, sir. Why,
the whole Government isn't worth the blood of one of them!"

"I am sorry about Fred," Julian said sympathetically. "All the same,
Robert, you must try and pull yourself together."

The man groaned.

"Pull myself together!" he said angrily. "Mr. Orden, sir, I'm trying to
keep respectful, but it's a hard thing. I've been reading the evening
papers. There's an article, signed `Paul Fiske', in the Pall Mall. They
tell me that you're Paul Fiske. You're for peace, it seems--for peace
with the German Emperor and his bloody crew."

"I am in favour of peace on certain terms, at the earliest possible
moment," Julian admitted.

"That's where you've sold us, then--sold us all!" Robert declared
fiercely. "My boys died believing they were fighting for men who would
keep their word. The war was to go on till victory was won.. They died
happily, believing that those who had spoken for England would keep
their word. You're very soft-hearted in that article, sir, about
the living. Did you think, when you sat down to write it, about the
dead?--about that wilderness of white crosses out in France? You're
proposing in cold blood to let those devils stay on their own dunghill."

"It is a very large question, Robert," Julian reminded him. "The war is
fast reaching a period of mutual exhaustion."

The man threw all restraint to the winds.

"Claptrap!" was his angry reply. "You wealthy people want your fleshpots
again. We've a few more million men, haven't we? America has a few more
millions?"

"Your own loss, Robert, has made you--and quite naturally, too--very
bitter," h