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The situation was still very tense, as John well knew, much more tense than any of these excitable masqueraders in the tent realised. One of the younger mistresses in the Church School— the one who had gone to Yeovil to see her lover on Maundy Thursday—now appeared in much perturbation to say that there was a quarrel going on in the other pavilion between Mr. Athling and the professional directors from Dublin. These people, it transpired, a man and a woman, were great admirers of Monsieur Capporelli and they were indignant now because the famous clown, who had been sitting patiently in a corner of the tent smoking cigarettes for the last hour, was being kept waiting so long for his pantomimic performance. Made up as Dago-net, in a disguisement learnedly and exquisitely copied from museum specimens of mediaeval costume, Paul Capporelli was now engaged in a lively conversation with Persephone Spear, by whose personality, in her blue robe and red bodice, as the Virgin Mother, he had clearly been fascinated. But the Dubliners were full of annoyance over this protracted conversation between their precious Fool and this very local Madonna.

The conversation between Barter and the Taunton police force had ended in the latter taking their stand all along the hedge to prevent any more of the mob from entering from that unauthorised direction. But there were enough now of the irresponsible element, crowding up behind the assembled strikers, to make things look very threatening. These newcomers were by no means of the sort to be stopped by the waving of Miss Drew's green parasol, and between them and Mother Legge, who was sitting at the end of the sixth row, there had already begun a volley of scurrilous badinage that showed every sign of starting a really unpleasant contretemps. Things indeed had reached that stage;—it was already nearly three o'clock and there was nothing to see on the stage but two gilded thrones and the great Pen-dragon flag—when the smallest spark, like the accident of Mother Legge and her Rabelaisian tongue being on :he exlreme vest of the audience, might have led to a general pandemonium, out of which, with all these foreigners already gelling nenous and irritable, it would have been impossible to get back to any sort of order. Such a spark seemed now to have been really struck. not by Mother Legge, but by the arrival upon the scene of the Marquis of P.

It was the manner of this nobleman's approach that started the trouble. Completely unaware of the arrival of the real People of Glastonbury upon the field, my Lord had taken it into his head to have himself driven by Sergeant Blimp in a light dog-cart, over from Mark Court. Taking for granted that his daughter was keeping a seat for him—as indeed she had written to say she would do—Lord P. told Blimp to drive him straight round the field—they entered it from a gate at the town-end— till he reached the front row of seats and there drop him. fc*You can go,“ he had said, ”to the Pilgrims' then, Blimp, and put up. I'll walk round there later."

Now Sergeant Blimp, although he would have submitted to torture rather than have slept in Merlin's room, had no fear of a mob. So when it became obvious that there was a mob—and a rather dangerous-looking one, between them and their objective— the Sergeant cracked his whip and trotted his tall black horse all the more resolutely. Then the disturbance which had been on the edge of breaking out for so long really did seem inevitable. Hundreds of angry voices were raised; people who were further off pushed others who were nearer, right into the path of the dog-cart; sticks were brandished, and if stones were not thrown it wTas rather due to the fact that there were none in that grassy field than to any want of a will to throw them! Lord P., though courted by the Wessex bourgeoisie, was—for certain particular reasons—detested by its proletariat; and his appearance at this juncture gave this latter a chance that was not likely to be repeated. In all human communities—indeed in all human groups—there are strange atavistic forces that are held in chains deep down under the surface. Like the imprisoned Titans, these Enceladuses and Sisyphuses and Briareuses, dwell in the nether depths of human nature ready to break forth in blind scoriae fury under a given touch. In these violent upheavals of class against class there is something far deeper than principle or opinion at stake. Skin against skin . . . blood against blood . . . nerves against nerves . . e rise up from incalculable depths.

Lord P. himself was not less than astounded at the intensity of the feeling that his figure in that dog-cart by the side of his placid servant excited in this mob. It was as if everything in these people's lives that they had suffered from . . . indifference . . . neglect . . . contempt . . . cold malignant distaste . . . fastidious disgust . . . everything that had weighed on them, day by day, in a tacit conspiracy to press them down and keep them down, suddenly incarnated itself in that grizzled man with the small pointed grey beard and big wrinkled nose. Lord P. was absolutely startled, and, though by no means a coward, he was even a little frightened, by the looks he caught on some of the women's faces in that surging mass of people.

While his black horse plunged and reared in its harness, while men tugged at its bridle and tried to pull the reins out of Blimp's hands, while there was danger not only of the shafts of the cart being broken but of the whole equipage being upset, he caught on the face of one woman from Paradise—she was a remote cousin, by the way, of Abel Twig—a look of such insane ferocity, free from every other feeling, that a spasm of sheer panic seized upon him. It was one of those moments that are apt to occur in the most carefully regulated communities. My Lord was no longer under the protection of an invisible network of magnetic wires. He was a man, and a man acquainted with fear. But what had frightened him was not the violence of other men. What had frightened him was a glance into a black crater. For that black crater possessed eyes, and the Marquis of P., clinging to his swaying and heaving dog-cart, had looked into those eyes. .,

People rarely receive these revelations of the underside of life unaccompanied by some funny little triviality which, like a mime or a mommet, goes ever afterward hand in hand with that chimera. The trivial thing on this occasion was some black horse-hairs which lay smeared hi a I;tlle *)&Sn a^a::^! ur.e of the green shafts now in such eminent darker ¦-•! beir.i br 'kirn. Black horse-hairs, wet with sweat and stick:::2 to painted <(\ood. were henceforth alwa\s associated in his rAvA *%-11I1 this deadlv popular fury surging up out of the cracks and :r^::;es of Tor Field.

It was impossible for the Taunton police to remain lor.2 in ignorance of the nature of this howling and strucglin-j 2roup of persons who were apparently hustling two men in a painted cart and trying to pull them out: but for the next three or four minutes their official attention was so completely occupied in holding back the crowd which kept pouring down the lane from entering the field that they could not cope with this new trouble. “Even a Zomerset orficer/' as one of them said to Lord P. on a subsequent occasion, ”couldn't be in two earners of the same girt field at the same time."

It was, however, much easier for Mr. Geard, who icas* quite simply, as he had told his family he would be, surveying matters from the top of the Tor, to get the full significance of the danger to Lord P. than it was for Taunton policemen. They were forced to look up, being fully occupied. He was in a position to look down, having nothing to do. There wTould certainly have been a rush from the bourgeois portion of the native audience to rescue the hustled nobleman; in fact, his own son, \Till Zoyland, would have been at his side in a couple of minutes; if it had not been for two things: first, that there was a rise in the ground to the west of that audience, wThich prevented them from seeing what was transpiring over there, and secondly that the long-expected Pageant now commenced in real earnest, absorbing everyone's attention.

A couple of hundred lads and lasses gorgeously attired in mediaeval costume marched forth now from the two heraldic pavilions and grouped themselves round the Dragon Flag and round the twp golden thrones. The body of the dead Elaine was carried in—never in her life had Crummie looked so lovely— and the Archbishop of Canterbury accompanied by a Knight carrying the crown of Britain on a green cushion, stood at the feet of the dead. Lancelot du Lac leaned against the side of Queen Gwenevere's throne, while, for those initiated in such matters, the forms of Sir Percival, Sir Galahad, and Sir Gawain, clearly distinguishable from one another by the devices on their shields, could be made out conversing together at the back of Arthur's throne. To the west of the Queen's throne and at a little distance from the rest—as if retaining their own mythical independence—stood Tristram and Iseult, while, in a position of ferocious skulking, spying, and murderously tracking down was King Mark of Cornwall.

In regard to the choice of characters for this first part of the Pageant there had been no difficulty save for one curious exception. This exception was Merlin. John had been very anxious to have a Merlin and so had Edward Athling. Mr. Geard, however, had steadily and—to the mind of the whole company, obstinately—refused to allow Merlin to be represented at all. “But we're going to represent Christ, Daddy,” Crummie had pleaded. “You don't mean to say that Merlin's more sacred than Christ.” Mr. Geard had smiled and shook his head. “Christ was buried in Jerusalem,” was his curious answer; by which John understood him to mean that while for the world at large Christ was by far the more sacred, here, in Glastonbury, where he disappeared from view, Merlin must always be the “numen” or the “Tremendum Mysterium” that can be second to none.

Mr. Geard had reached the top of the hill by a circuitous route long before the Pageant was due to begin. The performance was divided—and the Dubliners had displayed their nicest virtuosity in the way this had been done—into three parts. All three parts had a lot of dumb show, a limited amount of dialogue and a great many choral songs. But the point in which the high technical skill of the Dubliners was most revealed was in the manner in which the Pageant was fused and blended with the Passion Play, the two together forming a trilogy to which a strange and original unity had been given by the role played by Arthur's Fool. The Dubliners, with Irish audacity, had given Capporelli the leading role in all three parts, and by an artful reversal of chronology in the interests of symbolism, the thing began with the latest epoch of time and worked back to the earliest. Thus the opening dealt with the Arthurian Cycle, the interlude with ihe pa<:.r..iyz ¦-,¦)-

the Passion of Christ. a::U the v.rr;:;-! >:: v:ih \h; x./l'iA Lv:;-ric Muholog}, Capporeii: bring I»::l ,::?•: ;*i : :;-!. Mr.:::.*-:. ,; comic Roman soldier in the second. u::d :. .; ^ .;/.•: :i; ^ i;;*> 1.^:^ Taliessin in the third.

In the intervals of their violent quarts? \>l:.- \:',tV::c !:-•/ Dubliners had worked \ery er.thusidstiealh v :;>. [,>;. ,,: :./.-,-mystical effects. Athling had indulged himself u:;L >l ; .--.! .¦-. wistfulness in the kind of poetry he had made ::y :.!• :;.!.. I t. forsake, but the new note, the modern note thai was ?j .!»:: \: -u* to Lady Rachel, had forced its way in, and had uiu?r: a i'L^rrv and even an uncomfortable twist to many scenes of this s:ra:ir«* Pageant. This was especially the case with the scenes in whKn Capporelli entered, and the great clo^n consenting to use several poignant and mocking apothegms composed Ly the Middiezuy poet had added to them certain curious touches of his own. There was such a distance between the grassy ledge where the performance took place and the front row of seats that the voices of individual players were liable to be blown away upon the wind. This .was, however, compensated for by a printed libretto which the audience could read while they enjoyed the dancing, the studied gestures, the symbolic ritual, of the trilogy.

Mr. Geard had many deep and strange feelings as he watched the gathering crowd from the top of the Tor. He had found quite a large group of noisy lads up there when he reached the top, but, knowing the Mayor by sight, they had hurriedly shogged off, running down the hill at top speed to join in the sport of baiting the policemen where the booths and caravans stood in a line under the hedge and where ginger-pop was to be sold. All except one. This was the small offspring of Solly Lew, the taxi-driver, a grave little boy called Steve, who had manifested for Mr. Geard the moment he appeared the peculiar fascination that a child will sometimes display for a formidable middle-aged man. Mr. Geard, finding himself alone with this child on the summit of the great haunted hill, the hill of Gwyn-ap-Nud, the Welsh Fairy-Demon, the hill where Abbot Whiting had been so bloodily murdered, called Steve to his side and made him sit down with him under the tower.

It was indeed upon a remarkable scene that Mr. Geard and his small companion looked down now as they surveyed the verdurous undulations of those island-Valleys—Ynys Witrin. Ynys Avallach, Insula Avallonia the land of Modred, Melwas, Meleagnant, Mellygraunce, Aestiva Regio, Insula Pomorum. Gwlad yr Hav, Insula Vitrea, Isle de Voirre, yr Echwyd, Glast, Glastenic, Glastonia, Glaston—over which the intense sky, that Midsummer Day, seemed actually to be bowing down, bowing and bending and battening upon those lovely green undulations, as if the greatest and most powerful of all created Beings was taking His pleasure with the sweet grass-scented earth.

The crowds of people seated on the chairs and benches in the centre of the bottom of the field resembled a magician's carpet that Mr. Geard by his incantations from up there under St. Michael's Tower had caused to be laid down. He himself now, like a modern Gwyn-ap-Nud, surveyed his astonishing evocation with a silent gratitude, with an up-welling feeling of fulfilment, deep as that fount of red water whose flowing he could detect at the foot of the opposite hill. The hats and garments and parasols of the feminine element in his audience—for they were all dressed for summer weather that day—caused the great expectant crowd to resemble, spread out upon the grass, that many-coloured coat which the original nomadic Joseph had received of his father Jacob. Westward of the crowd Mr. Geard could see the roofs of Glastonbury, looking, with all their bright red tiles, as if a great wave of spray from the chalybeate fountain had washed over them. Rising from among these red-tiled roofs he could see the massive tower of St. John's and the lesser tower of St. Benignus9. These two towers from any distance were, with the one under which he sat, the characteristic land-marks of the place, for the Abbey Ruins, although to a careful scrutiny they were just distinguishable among the trees, were unable to stand out in clear relief.