Page:Phillpotts - The Grey Room (Macmillan, 1921).djvu/70

Rh ever heard of a sailor disobeying—except Nelson?"

"He's paid, poor fellow," said his niece, who walked beside him.

"We have all paid," declared the north countryman. "We have all paid the price; and the price has been a great deal of suffering and discomfort and stress of mind that we ought not have been called upon to endure. One resents such things in a stable world."

"Well, I'm not going to church, anyway. I must smoke for my nerves. I'm a psychic myself, and I react to a thing of this sort," replied Fayre-Michell.

From a distant stile between two fields Mr. Travers, some hundred yards ahead, was waving directions and pointing to the left.

"Go to Jericho!" snapped Mr. Handford, but not loud enough for Ernest Travers to hear him.

A little ring of bells throbbed thin music. It rose and fell on the easterly breeze and a squat grey tower, over which floated a white ensign on a flagstaff, appeared upon a little knoll of trees in the midst of the village of Chadlands.

Presently the bells stopped, and the flag was brought down to half-mast. Mr. Travers had reached the church.

"A maddening sort of man," said Miles Handford, who marked these phenomena. "Be sure Sir Walter never told him to do anything of that sort. He has taken it upon himself—a theatrical mind. If I were the vicar"