Page:On everything.djvu/75

On the Rights of Property that respect is always paid by the simple to the learned. He sat by them at the little table, drinking also, and for some minutes listened to their stream of affirmation and of vision, but soon he shook his head in a quavering senile way, as he very vaguely caught the drift of their contention. "You've got the wrong end of the stick," he said. . . . "You've got the wrong end of the stick! . . . Can't take away what a man's got . . . 'tis wrawng! . . . 'Vide it up, all the same next week. . . . Same hands! Same hands!" he went on foolishly wagging his head, and still smiling almost like an imbecile. "All in the same hands again in a week! . . . 'Vide it up ever so much." They neglected him and continued their ardent debate, and as they flung repeated bolts of theory he, their new companion, still murmured to himself the security of established things and the ancient doctrine of ownership and of law.

But now the night and the stars had come to their appointed hour, and the ending which is decreed of all things had come also to their carousal. A young man of energy stood before them in his shirt sleeves, crying, "Time, Time!" as a voice might cry "Doom!" and, by force of crying and of orders, "The Lord Benthorpe" was emptied, and there was silence at last behind its shutters and its bolted doors.

These three, not yet in a mood for sleep, sauntered together westward through the vast landed estates of London, westward, to their distant homes. 59