e disagreeable part of secret service work I can
confidently recommend Godfrey.

Half an hour later he returned to me hot and breathless.

"The police sergeant told me, Excellency, that the Dean's going to
march all the Orangemen and a lot of other men along with them to
Belfast for the Unionist demonstration. They are having service in the
church first and they've all got rifles."

I have all my life steadily objected to politics being mixed with
religion. I hold most strongly that the Church ought not to be
dominated by politicians. The Church is degraded and religion is
brought into contempt when they are used by party leaders. But--the
bells had ceased ringing. The hymn was now, no doubt, being sung by
the men within. It occurred to me suddenly that on this occasion it
was not the politicians who were taking possession of religion, but
religion which was asserting its right to dominate politics. This is
plainly quite a different matter. I can even imagine that politics
might be improved if religion asserted itself a little more frequently
than it does. I still maintain that it is only right and fair to keep
politics out of the Church. I am not at all sure that it is right to
keep the Church out of politics.

"I told the sergeant," said Godfrey, "that he had better go and stop
them at once."

"Oh, did you?" I said. "Do you know, Godfrey, that's just the kind of
suggestion I'd expect you to make under the circumstances."

"Thanks awfully, Excellency," said Godfrey. "I'm awfully glad you're
pleased."

There are besides the sergeant three constables in our police barrack.
They are armed as a rule with short round sticks. On very important
occasions they carry an inferior kind of firearm called a carbine.
There were, I guessed about three hundred men in the church, and they
were armed with modern rifles. Godfrey's faith in the inherent majesty
of the law was extremely touching.

"Did he go?" I asked.

"I don't think he intends to," said Godfrey, "but he did not give me a
decided answer."

Our police sergeant is a man of sense.

"Did you say," I asked, "that they're going to march to Belfast?"

"That's what the sergeant told me," said Godfrey.

"Actually walk the whole way?"

Belfast is a good many miles away from us. It would, I suppose, take a
quick walker the better part of two days to accomplish the journey.

"He said 'march,'" said Godfrey. "I suppose he meant to walk."

This is, as we are consta