ntly reminded, the twentieth century. I
should have supposed that any one who wanted to get from this place to
Belfast would have gone in a train. Our nearest railway station is
some way off, but one might walk to it in an hour and a half. Once
there, the journey to Belfast can be accomplished in another two
hours. It seems rather absurd to spend two days over it, but then the
whole thing is rather absurd. The rifles are absurd. The gathering of
three hundred men into a church to indulge in a kind of grace before
meat as preparation for a speech from Babberly is rather absurd. To
set a peal of bells playing--but I am not quite sure about the hymn
tune. It did not sound to me absurd as it came across the bay. I am, I
trust, a reasonable man, not peculiarly liable to be swept off my feet
by waves of emotion; but there was something in the sound of that hymn
tune which prevented me from counting it, along with our other
performances, as an absurdity.

CHAPTER XVII

The Dean and his men did actually march to Belfast. I saw them there
two days later. I also saw them start, ranged in very fair order with
the Dean at their head. The most surprising thing about their march
was that they had no band. There are at least two bands in the town. I
subscribe to both of them regularly and have occasionally given a
donation to a third which enjoys an intermittent existence, springing
into sudden activity for a week or two and then disappearing for
months. I asked the police sergeant, who is a South of Ireland man and
very acute of mind, why none of the bands accompanied the army. The
explanation he gave me was interesting and suggestive.

"There isn't as much as a boy in the district," he said, "who'd
content himself with a drum when he might have the handling of a
rifle."

And yet an excessive fondness for drums has been reckoned--by English
politicians--one of the failings of the Ulster man.

I went to Belfast next morning quite unexpectedly. No peal of bells
heartened me for my start, partly because all the bell-ringers and
nearly all the able-bodied members of the church in the parish had
marched forth with the Dean. Partly also, I suppose, because I did not
travel in a heroic way. I am much too old to undertake a two-days'
walking tour, so I went by train. Godfrey saw me off. I owed this
attention, I am sure, to the fact that Marion was with me. She told
Godfrey that she was going to marry Bob Power, but Godfrey did