powerful heresiarchs in the Church. The moderns say we must not
punish heretics. My only doubt is whether we have a right to
punish anybody else."

"But this is absurd!" cried the policeman, clasping his hands with
an excitement uncommon in persons of his figure and costume, "but
it is intolerable! I don't know what you're doing, but you're
wasting your life. You must, you shall, join our special army
against anarchy. Their armies are on our frontiers. Their bolt
is ready to fall. A moment more, and you may lose the glory of
working with us, perhaps the glory of dying with the last heroes
of the world."

"It is a chance not to be missed, certainly," assented Syme, "but
still I do not quite understand. I know as well as anybody that
the modern world is full of lawless little men and mad little
movements. But, beastly as they are, they generally have the one
merit of disagreeing with each other. How can you talk of their
leading one army or hurling one bolt. What is this anarchy?"

"Do not confuse it," replied the constable, "with those chance
dynamite outbreaks from Russia or from Ireland, which are really
the outbreaks of oppressed, if mistaken, men. This is a vast
philosophic movement, consisting of an outer and an inner ring.
You might even call the outer ring the laity and the inner ring
the priesthood. I prefer to call the outer ring the innocent
section, the inner ring the supremely guilty section. The outer
ring--the main mass of their supporters--are merely anarchists;
that is, men who believe that rules and formulas have destroyed
human happiness. They believe that all the evil results of human