remembered that this identical question had been put to him the
day before by the pimply-faced boy who distributed leaflets. He wondered
vaguely at the importance which attached to the nickname.

'I am not sure,' he said, 'that I quite know what you mean. You see, I
have only just entered the divinity school, and I hardly know anything
about theology. What is a High Churchman?'

'Oh, it doesn't require any theology to know that. It's the simplest
thing in the world. A High Churchman is--well, of course, a High
Churchman sings Gregorian chants, you know, and puts flowers on
the altar. There's more than that, of course. In fact, a High
Churchman------' He paused and then added with an air of victorious
conviction: 'But anyhow if you were High Church you would be sure to
know it.'

'Ah, well,' said Hyacinth, turning to leave the room, 'I don't know
anything about it, so I suppose I'm not High Church.'

Mackenzie, however, was not going to allow him to escape so easily.

'Hold on a minute. If you're not High Church why won't you come to our
meetings?'

'Because I can't join in your prayers when I am not at all sure that
England ought to win.'

'Good Lord!' said Mackenzie. It is possible to startle even the
secretary of a prayer union into mild profanity. 'You don't mean to tell
me you are a Pro-Boer, and you a divinity student?'

It had not hitherto struck Hyacinth that it was impossible to combine a
sufficient orthodoxy with a doubt about the invariable righteousness of
England's quarrels. Afterwards he came to understand the matter better.

CHAPTER III

Mackenzie was not at heart an ill-natured man, and he would have
repudiated with indignation the charge of being a mischief-maker. He
felt after his conversation with Hyacinth much as most men would if they
discovered an unsuspected case of small-pox among their acquaintances.
His first duty was to warn the society in which he moved of the
existence of a dangerous man, a violent and wicked rebel. He repeated
a slightly exaggerated version of what Hyacinth had said to everyone
he met. The pleasurable sense of personal importance which comes with
having a story to tell grew upon him, and he spent the greater part
of the day in seeking out fresh confidants to swell the chorus of his
commination.

In England at the time public opinion was roused to a fever heat of
patriotic enthusiasm, and the Irish Protestant Unionists were eager to
outdo even the music-h