"Is it really true," asked Turnbull, "that he has been allowed to
buy up and control such a lot? What put the country into such a
state?"

Mr. Cumberland Vane laughed outright. "What put the country into
such a state?" he asked. "Why, you did. When you were fool enough
to agree to fight MacIan, after all, everybody was ready to
believe that the Bank of England might paint itself pink with
white spots."

"I don't understand," answered Turnbull. "Why should you be
surprised at my fighting? I hope I have always fought."

"Well," said Cumberland Vane, airily, "you didn't believe in
religion, you see--so we thought you were safe at any rate. You
went further in your language than most of us wanted to go; no
good in just hurting one's mother's feelings, I think. But of
course we all knew you were right, and, really, we relied on
you."

"Did you?" said the editor of _The Atheist_ with a bursting
heart. "I am sorry you did not tell me so at the time."

He walked away very rapidly and flung himself on a garden seat,
and for some six minutes his own wrongs hid from him the huge and
hilarious fact that Cumberland Vane had been locked up as a
lunatic.

The garden of the madhouse was so perfectly planned, and answered
so exquisitely to every hour of daylight, that one could almost