ry one of them."

"And thank heavens you'll still have to pay us a little super-tax," the
Cabinet Minister remarked, smiling.

Sir Alfred found nothing to dismay him in the prospect.

"You shall have every penny of it, my friend," he promised. "I have
taken a quarter of a million of your war loan and I shall take the same
amount of your next one. I spend all my time upon your committees, my
own affairs scarcely interest me, and yet I thought to-day, when my
car was stopped to let a company of the London Regiment march down to
Charing-Cross, that there wasn't one of those khaki-clad young men who
wasn't offering more than I."

The Bishop leaned forward from his place.

"Those are noteworthy words of yours, Sir Alfred," he said. "There is
nothing in the whole world so utterly ineffective as our own passionate
gratitude must seem to ourselves when we think of all those young
fellows--not soldiers, you know, but young men of peace, fond of their
pleasures, their games, their sweethearts, their work--throwing it
all on one side, passing into another life, passing into the valley of
shadows. I, too, have seen those young men, Sir Alfred."

The conversation became general. The host of this little dinner-party
leaned back in his place for a moment, engrossed in thought. It was a
very distinguished, if not a large company. There were three Cabinet
Ministers, a high official in the War Office, a bishop, a soldier
of royal blood back for a few days from the Front, and his own
nephew--Granet. He sat and looked round at them and a queer little smile
played upon his lips. If only the truth were known, the world had never
seen a stranger gathering. It was a company which the King himself
might have been proud to gather around him; serious, representative
Englishmen--Englishmen, too, of great position. There was not one of
them who had not readily accepted his invitation, there was not one of
them who was not proud to sit at his table, there was not one of them
who did not look upon him as one of the props of the Empire.

There was a little rustle as one of the new parlourmaids walked smoothly
to his side and presented a silver salver. He took the single letter
from her, glanced at it for a moment carelessly and then felt as
though the fingers which held it had been pierced by red-hot wires. The
brilliant little company seemed suddenly to dissolve before his eyes. He
saw nothing but the marking upon that letter, growing larger a