THE BURNING SPEAR




I

THE HERO

In the year ---- there dwelt on Hampstead Heath a small thin gentleman
of fifty-eight, gentle disposition, and independent means, whose wits
had become somewhat addled from reading the writings and speeches of
public men. The castle which, like every Englishman, he inhabited was
embedded in lilac bushes and laburnums, and was attached to another
castle, embedded, in deference to our national dislike of uniformity,
in acacias and laurustinus. Our gentleman, whose name was John Lavender,
had until the days of the Great War passed one of those curious
existences are sometimes to be met with, in doing harm to nobody. He
had been brought up to the Bar, but like most barristers had never
practised, and had spent his time among animals and the wisdom of the
past. At the period in which this record opens he owned a young female
sheep-dog called Blink, with beautiful eyes obscured by hair; and was
attended to by a thin and energetic housekeeper, in his estimation
above all weakness, whose name was Marian Petty, and by her husband, his
chauffeur, whose name was Joe.

It was the ambition of our hero to be, like all public men, without fear