propound the doctrines of peace at home.'

Rockney's forehead was exquisitely eruptive, red and swelling. Mattock
lurched on his chair. The wine was in them, and the captain commended
the spiriting of it, as Prospero his Ariel.

Who should intervene at this instant but the wretched Philip, pricked on
the point of honour as a soldier! Are we inevitably to be thwarted by
our own people?

'I suppose we all work for pay,' said he. 'It seems to me a cry of the
streets to call us by hard names. The question is what we fight for.'

He spoke with a witless moderation that was most irritating, considering
the latest news from the old country.

'You fight to subjugate, to enslave,' said Con, 'that's what you're
doing, and at the same time your journals are venting their fine irony
at the Austrians and the Russians and the Prussians for tearing Poland to
strips with their bloody beaks.'

'We obey our orders, and leave you to settle the political business,'
Philip replied.

Forbery declined the fray. Patrick was eagerly watchful and dumb.
Rockney finished his coffee with a rap of the cup in the saucer, an
appeal for the close of the sitting; and as Dr. Forbery responded to it
by pushing back his chair, he did likewise, and the other made a
movement.