own coal for fancy prices, and who, as long as they can get those prices,
care as little for national starvation as most merchant princes and
pirates have cared for the provinces that were wasted or the peoples that
were enslaved just before their ships came home. But though I am a bit of
a revolutionist myself, I cannot quite go with you in the extreme violence
you suggest. You say--"

"I say," he cried, bursting through my speech with a really splendid
energy like that of some noble beast, "I say I'd take all these blasted
miners and--"

I had risen slowly to my feet, for I was profoundly moved; and I stood
staring at that mental monster.

"Oh," I said, "so it is the miners who are all to be sent to penal
servitude, so that we may get more coal. It is the miners who are to be
shot dead, every man Jack of them; for if once they are all shot dead they
will start mining again...You must forgive me, sir; I know I seem somewhat
moved. The fact is, I have just found something. Something I have been
looking for four years."

"Well," he asked, with no unfriendly stare, "and what have you found?"

"No," I answered, shaking my head sadly, "I do not think it would be quite
kind to tell you what I have found."

He had a hundred virtues, including the capital virtue of good humour, and
we had no difficulty in changing the subject and forgetting the
disagreement. He talked about society, his town friends and his country
sports, and I discovered in the course of it that he was a county