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Geard of Glastonbury stopped without finishing his sentence. The two young reporters from the Wayfarer received the impression that he might have finished with: “and the mud and the sand, and the sea and the land,” or any other indolent and sleepy gibberish. Stretching out his legs, however, he allowed the tattered bearskin to fall away' from his knees. Shamelessly then, in front of them all, he lifted himself up a little in his chair and broke wind. Then, with unabashed aplomb and scarcely covering his mouth with his hand he yawned portentously.

“Any question for me, my dears?” he muttered in a voice still half-strangled by his yawning.

An unemployed Welsh miner—tall, lean, starved, tragic—who had worked his passage to Bristol from Fishguard and then had trampec^to Glastonbury from Bristol, and who was now subsisting on, * special fund that Dave Spear had placed aside for workiriy^ § .^visitors, rose up on his feet at the back of the Rotunte aftv fr the great, placid, comfortable head of King Edgar,ay bel^ .£emaker, and said in a low, troubled tone that rang thi^sgert'tnat assembly like a broken harp-string: “I'd like to know, Mr. Mayor, now that you've finished telling us to enjoy ourselves like the beasts . . • when you think King Arthur is going to come backl” . 1

Instead of waiting for any reply to this question, which was uttered in a voice trembling with indignation, the tall miner, with a contemptuous jerk of his shoulders that expressed deep loathing for the Rotunda and everything in it, pushed his way through the crowd at the back and left the place.

But the bolt he had flung down created a violent disturbance among the audience. High words arose. The Welsh people in the hall began arguing fiercely among themselves, some of them sympathising with the man, some of them denouncing his uncivil outburst.

“Hush! Hush! Let Mr. Geard answer!” These words came from the lips of Nancy Stickles, who from the very beginning of what she called “the Mayor's Ministry” had left her house day after day, the moment she had got her Harry's breakfast, and slipped off to Chalice Hill.

The two young neophytes from Athling's office, who had been nudging each other nervously as they noted how ruffled and disturbed the great man in the big chair seemed to be by what had just transpired, looked at each other excitedly when they heard Nancy's voice. “Quite right, Mrs. Stickles!” one of them could not help crying. “Quite right!” It was these two young men who when their prophet was dead maintained steadily that he committed suicide from pure disappointment over the fiasco of this final discourse. It certainly did seem that the reference to Rex Arturus, just at the climax of what had been revealed that day, hit Bloody Johnny some sort of incalculable blow. The interruption seemed, however, to cause huge delight to his Welsh audience.

The curiously airy and upward-tilting intonation of the Welsh accent began to echo through the Rotunda, drowning everything else. It seemed as if nothing but the inexhaustible complacency of King Edgar and the two King Edmunds kept the Rotunda from complete domination by these excited Celts. Geard of Glas-tonbury surveyed his disturbed flock, like a bewildered shepherd whose woolly subjects have plunged into a forbidden field. In vain he stared at the calm lineaments of King Edgar. In vain he turned his gaze upon the majestic gravity of Edmund Ironsides. The best he seemed able to do, just then, was to look with a pitiful and wistful appeal into the intent, grey eyes of Nancy Stickles. “What . . . do . . . you think . . . Missis,” he stammered, “about what our brother has . . .”

It was a supreme moment in the life of Nancy. If the truth were known, this mystic-minded girl was playing now the historic role of the devoted disciple who, at an unexpected crisis, supports the Master's weakness with a faith greater than his own. Nancy got up upon her feet. All the heads in that circular room were turned upon her; for all could see that the man in the carved chair was waiting anxiously for her to speak.

llie Welsh controversy died down; the angry disputants were silent. A few puzzled Germans, not having caught the miner's words about King Arthur, cried, "Hush, hush!1' in their own tongue.

“Mr. Geard,” began Nancy Stickles. The girl was in her morning print dress with an old faded jacket hanging loose from her shoulders. She was bare-headed. Wet or fine she never stopped to put on a- hat for this morning excursion. Her big umbrella with a black curved handle, the only one of her wedding presents that Harry hadn't put away as “too good to use,” was propped up against a chair by her side. “Mr. Geard . . . and kind friends . . .” She was so sweet-looking, as she stood there, with her back to the oak panelling of the Rotunda, that a low sigh of appreciation rustled, like a faint breath over reed-tops, across the whole audience.

Bloody Johnny's discourses had often closed with questions; and Nancy's modest “kind friends” was a familiar opening at many an Adult School meeting in Pembroke and Glamorgan: “The brother from Wales, who asked your opinion, Sir, about King Arthur's return, seems to me like the Jews who are still waiting for a Messiah. Most of us in Glastonbury feel that God has been kind enough to us already, in sending us a man like you; a man from whose mouth, as we have just heard, the Living Water of Life flows!”

The girl stopped and searched about in her mind for something else she was obscurely anxious to say. “This terrible flood,” she went on in a low voice, “that we must all face in a few minutes when we go back to the town, must have been sent as a Sign.” She paused again and then went on in a louder voice. “A Sign that all this tin-mining and road-making and bridge-building is contrary to God's purpose.” She sat down blushing deeply and staring at her lap.

Bloody Johnny was displeased rather than pleased by the girl's reference to his enemy's activities. He sighed heavily, and, sinking back in his carved seat, closed his eyes. He felt weary, disappointed, dispirited. All night long he had been telling himself of the incredible impression that his divine Revelation—for so he felt it to be—would make upon these people; stirred up. excited, panic-stricken as they already were by the rising waters.

But in place of one great final outpouring of the Spirit, obliterating all divisions, all quarrels, all maliciousness, and setting him free, they were back again in the old wrangling human arena, Celt against Saxon, Capitalist against Communist, and every Philip against every John! Mr. Geard had come to Town's End Lhat day in the mood of Elijah when he was transported to Heaven in a chariot of fire. But now he began to feel that his Lord had forsaken him and left him alone with the false prophets.

“I cannot quite see,” an interested watchmaker from Lland-overy was explaining to the meeting, “why the perfectly sensible question of the departed brother from Fishguard should have met with the disapproval it seems to have met with in our honoured chairman. It is natural enough to mix altogether”—his voice now took on that irritating intonation which self-sufficient materialists assume when they indicate their mental superiority to their hearers—“to mix together Arthur's Return and Geard's Water of Life. Both are myths. Both are imaginary. Both belong to that world of fantastic unrealities which------”

“They both are true!” cried one of Athling's reporters. “We've got one of them with us here now,” cried the other, “and Arthur will yet come!”

A deplorable hubbub now arose. People argued with one another in every part of the room, some siding with the Llandovery atheist, some repeating the words of Nancy, others putting forward long-winded compromises of their own. Mr. Geard remained quiescent in the midst of all this. He lay back in his carved chair with his eyes half-closed. As upon that occasion when he had been locked into Wookey Hole, he felt that sleep was his only refuge. In this tendency to fall asleep when things were crucial, Bloody Johnny resembled Mat Dekker; the only difference being that Dekker's sleep was lighter and more easily disturbed. There was undoubtedly something in the chemical composition of that climate, in the languorous blue vapour that hovered over Glastonbury most of the year, and that seemed to emanate from all those drooping, heavy-lichen'd apple boughs and from all that green moss, which conduced to sleep, as the grand panacea for the strong characters of the place. What happened now was that in proportion as his crowd of Welsh theologians got more and more absorbed in their complicated arguments the Mayor got more and more sleepy.

Nancy could hardly bear to see him nodding so awkwardly there, with his big head drooping, first on one side and then on the other, while every now and then the sheer weight of that massive skull would wake him up with an unpleasant start. But there was nothing the girl could do; and she had already stayed away from the shop as long as she possibly dared. “God knows,” she thought, “what I shall find when I get back.” She pushed her way between the chairs to the entrance of the Rotunda and hurried out of the door. The majestic and self-satisfied head of St. Dunstan did not give her a glance. With abysmal and unctuous contentment it continued to gaze into space, while it seemed to murmur to itself—“What matter if Arthur never doe$ return. / am here.” St. Dunstan would have been much more horrified than Nancy herself was, and she was a little shocked, at the nature of the thought that just then the devil put into her head; the thought, namely, what a relief it would be, if, when she got back, she found that her husband, Harry the chemist, had been painlessly and peacefully droivnedl your breath! I'll come, Fll come.“ He pulled himself up from his chair and stood by Crummie's side for a second, regarding the quarrelsome mystics from the principality with an amused stare. He was still only half awake. His face was puffy with sleep, his eyes blurred and filmy. ”Let's go, let's go, my treasure,'“ he murmured, dragging her to the door by the ”arm.

As they left the Rotunda Crummie saw him turn sideways in a very quaint and casual way and automatically make a hurried inclination of his head towards the altar. Nothing would have induced Crummie to imitate him in this, for Sam's influence was still strong, and he had said: “God knows what sort of a Deity your father's got down there,” but it did strike her as a curious Lhing that Mr. Geard should have already grown so used to this place that he could treat his devil-worship, or whatever it was, in that self-forgetful, careless, mechanical fashion. They had hardly reached the road than they met Paul Trent, calm and feline as ever, though he was drenched to the skin from the w^aist down, and his teeth were chattering.

“Five deaths already, Comrades,” he announced grimly, drawing his beautifully curved womanish lips away from his white chattering teeth, in a grin worthy of Young Tewsy. “Two children out in Beckery, and a mother and two children in Dye House Lane. But there are probably lots of others by now; for the water keeps rising every moment! It's sea-water, Mr. Geard; that's what it is; and till this moon wanes the tides will go on keeping at Lhis height.”

“Have any boats come? Have we got enough boats?” “I should think they have come! From every direction they've been arriving. A motor-boat, if you please, has come in from Bridgewater. But there aren't half enough yet. It?s been rowing and wading, rowing and punting, rowing and hauling people out of top-windows, and pulling people off roofs, since six o'clock this morning! My hands are blistered with rowing. We've missed you sorely, Sir. I can tell you that All the poor people in Paradise ------” Here Crummie pushed herself between her father and

the man from the Scilly Islands and pinched his arm as harcT as she could. But Paul Trent was not to be stopped. “All the poor people in Paradise are saying that the Mayor deserted the town and that he left last night by the last train that ran . . . for Yeovil or somewhere.”

“Did you really hear that said?” Bloody Johnny's voice was so menacing that Crummie thrust her hand into his, and then turning to Paul Trent cried in vibrant tones: “Stop that now! You only say that to torment him. You knew where he was. You could have got him any moment! You've always hated Father, Mr. Trent; and now youVe got your chance, you're happy to hit him! Yes, you are . . . you've always hated him.”

But Mr. Geard stopped dead in the middle of the road and caught the young lawyer by the sleeve. “Did you really hear that said?” His voice was like the rumble of underground thunder.

Paul Trent shrugged his shoulders and looked at Crummie. Under normal conditions the Mayor's intensity of emotion would have overawed him; but he had seen such sights and had had such experiences in the last few hours that he was in a mood to face anything. “Of course. And not only in Paradise. I was in Butts Close and Beckery and Manor Road and Dye House Lane; and wherever I was I heard the same thing. They don't care much for our commune, and I don't blame 'em. That confounded little ass, Spear, has ruined everything with his absurd assessors and his meddling and fumbling with people's lives. But if our commune ain't popular, our Mayor—no! I'm not going to stop, Miss Geard! Why should I stop ? I owe nothing to Glastonbury. I'm a Cornishman; and I give you all to the devil, and your drowned town too!—our Mayor is despisedl Yes, your poorer fellow-comrades, Mr. Geard, say on all sides, as the police from Bridge-water and the soldiers from Taunton come in to help—it's eleven o'clock now and they say the whole Cadet-Corps from Sherborne School will be here by noon!—that the only person no one has seen near the water is the Mayor! I've been telling 'em that the Mayor was praying for 'em; but they say the Reverend Dekker and the Reverend Dr. Sodbury are hard at work in the boats, and it seems funny that------” The man's ungovernable spitefulness was brought to a pause at this point by the chattering of his leeth and by a fit of violent shivering that took possession of his whole body.

These physical manifestations were not lost upon Mr. Geard, and, as if an actual hand had smitten the scales from his eyes, his awareness of these things transformed in a second the wThole cast of his feelings. “Yes, I ought to have got up earlier, much earlier!” he said. “You are right, Trent. You are quite right. No, no, my precious,” he went on, addressing Crummie now and speaking calmly and sadly. “We do what we can, but we are all weak ... all blind and weak. Well! come . . . come . . . come . , . Let us go on and save all we can. One minute, though, my dearsi” With the familiar expression “my dears” the old dark fire resumed its accustomed glow in Bloody Johnny's eyes. He dropped Crummie's hand and began searching in his pockets. Presently he brought out a brandy flask and quickly untwisted its glass stopper. “Here, sonny,” he cried, in a tone he might have used to Elphin Cantle or Steve Lew, “take a swig of this and finish it if you can. You'll be feverish soon.”