It was Sunday morning, and none of the Beechmark party except Mrs.
Friend, Lady Luton and her seventeen-year-old daughter had shown any
inclination to go to church. Geoffrey French and Helena had escorted the
churchgoers the short way across the park, taking a laughing leave of
them at the last stile, whence the old church was but a stone's throw.
There was a circle of chairs on the lawn intermittently filled by
talkers. Lord Buntingford was indoors and was reported to have had some
ugly news that morning of a discharged soldiers' riot in a neighbouring
town where he owned a good deal of property. The disturbance had been for
the time being suppressed, but its renewal was expected, and Buntingford,
according to Julian Horne, who had been in close consultation with him,
was ready to go over at any moment, on a telephone call from the town
authorities, and take what other "specials" he could gather with him.

"It's not at all a nice business," said Horne, looking up from his long
chair, as Geoffrey French and Helena reappeared. "And if Philip is rung
up, he'll sweep us all in. So don't be out of the way, Geoffrey."

"What's the matter? Somebody has been bungling as usual, I suppose," said
Helena in her most confident and peremptory tone.

"The discharged men say that nobody pays any attention to them--and they
mean to burn down something."

"On the principle of the Chinaman, and 'roast pig,'" said French,
stretching himself at full length on the grass, where Helena was already
sitting. "What an extraordinary state of mind we're all in! We all want
to burn something. I want to burn the doctors, because some of the
medical boards have been beasts to some of my friends; the soldiers over