"You will be inside the building in three minutes," he said, with
pulverizing precision, "or you will be fired on by the artillery
at all the windows. There is too much talking in this garden; we
intend to close it. You will be accommodated indoors."

"Ah!" said MacIan, with a long and satisfied sigh, "then I was
right."

And he turned his back and walked obediently towards the
building. Turnbull seemed to canvass for a few minutes the notion
of knocking the Master down, and then fell under the same almost
fairy fatalism as his companion. In some strange way it did seem
that the more smoothly they yielded, the more swiftly would
events sweep on to some great collision.



XX. DIES IRAE

As they advanced towards the asylum they looked up at its rows on
rows of windows, and understood the Master's material threat. By
means of that complex but concealed machinery which ran like a
network of nerves over the whole fabric, there had been shot out
under every window-ledge rows and rows of polished-steel
cylinders, the cold miracles of modern gunnery. They commanded
the whole garden and the whole country-side, and could have blown
to pieces an army corps.

This silent declaration of war had evidently had its complete