ven when I knew all
this did I desire to share in the conflict. I am old and feeble, but
that is not the reason why there was no desire on me, for strength is in
His power to give to whom He wills. I did not desire it, because I was
quite happy, being safe with Him.'

For a long time after he ceased speaking there was silence, for Hyacinth
had no comment to offer. At last the old man spoke again.

'That is all. I have no other word of revelation. But I have wondered
since how men are to be disentangled from their parties and their
churches and their nations, and gathered simply into good and bad. Will
all men who are good just know the Captain when they see Him and range
themselves with Him? But why should we think about such things as these?
Doubtless He can order them. But you, Hyacinth--will you be sure to know
the good side from the bad, the Captain from the enemy?'

For a long time after he had gone to bed Hyacinth lay awake haunted by
his father's prophecy of an Armageddon. There was that in his nature
which responded eagerly to such a call to battle. In the presence of
enthusiasm like his father's or like Augusta Goold's, Hyacinth
caught fire. His mind flamed with the idea of an Independent Ireland
resplendent with her ancient glories. He embraced no less eagerly the
thought of his father's battle and his own part in it. Groping for
points of contact between the two enthusiasms, he caught at the
conception of the Roman Church as the Antichrist and her power in
Ireland as the point round which the fight must rage. Then with a sudden
flash he saw, not Rome, but the British Empire, as the embodiment of
the power of darkness. He had learned to think of it as a force, greedy,
materialistic, tyrannous, grossly hypocritical. What more was required
to satisfy the conception of evil that he sought for? He remembered
all that he had ever heard from Augusta Goold and her friends about the
shameless trickery of English statesmen, about the insatiable greed of
the merchants, about the degraded sensuality of the workers. He recalled
the blatant boastfulness with which English demagogues claimed to be
the sole possessors of enlightened consciences, and the tales of
native races exploited, gin-poisoned, and annihilated by pioneers of
civilization advancing with Bibles in their hands.

But with all his capacity for enthusiasm there was a strain of weakness
in Hyacinth. More than once after the glories of an Independent Ireland