en, long before his march was done, while
awe-struck men and weeping women still listened to the strident clamour
of his arms, the spinners of the webs were at work again, patiently
joining broken threads, flinging fresh filaments across unbridged gulfs,
refastening to their points of attachment the gossamer which seemed so
frail, which yet the storm of violence failed to destroy utterly.

CHAPTER X.

I reached home early in May and underwent an experience common, I
suppose, to all travellers.

The city clerk, returning after a glorious week in Paris, finds that his
family is still interested in the peculiarities of the housemaid, the
Maud, or Ethel of the hour. To him, with his heart enlarged by nightly
visits to the Folies Bergeres, it seems at first almost impossible that
any one can care to talk for hours about the misdeeds of Maud. He knows
that he himself was once excited over these domestic problems, but it
seems impossible that he ever can be again. Yet he is. A week passes,
a week of the old familiar life. The voluptuous joys of Parisian music
halls fade into dim memories. The realities of life, the things on which
his mind works, are the new lace curtains for the drawing-room window,
the ridiculous "swank" of young Jones in the office, and the question of
the dismissal of Maud the housemaid.

I found London humming with excitement over Irish affairs and for a
while I wondered how any one could think that Irish affairs mattered in
the least. Fresh from my wanderings over a huge continent Ireland seemed
to me a small place. It took me a week to get my mind into focus again.
Then I began once more to see the Home Rule question as it should be
seen. South America and Ascher's web of international credit sank into
their proper insignificance.

I met Malcolmson in my club a week after my return. He very nearly
pulled the buttons off my waistcoat in his eagerness to explain the
situation to me. Malcolmson has a vile habit of grabbing the clothes
of any one he particularly wants to speak to. If the subject is only
moderately interesting he pulls a sleeve or a lappet of a coat. When he
has something very important to say, he inserts two fingers between
the buttons of your waistcoat and pulls. I knew I was in for something
thrilling when he towed me into a quiet corner of the smoking room by my
two top buttons.

I have known Malcolmson for nearly twenty years. He was adjutant of
my old regiment when I joine