"And who are you?" exploded Vane. "Are your views necessarily the
right ones? Are you necessarily in possession of the truth?"

"Yes," said MacIan.

The magistrate broke into a contemptuous laugh.

"Oh, you want a nurse to look after you," he said. "You must pay
L10."

Evan MacIan plunged his hands into his loose grey garment and
drew out a queer looking leather purse. It contained exactly
twelve sovereigns. He paid down the ten, coin by coin, in
silence, and equally silently returned the remaining two to the
receptacle. Then he said, "May I say a word, your worship?"

Cumberland Vane seemed half hypnotized with the silence and
automatic movements of the stranger; he made a movement with his
head which might have been either "yes" or "no". "I only wished
to say, your worship," said MacIan, putting back the purse in his
trouser pocket, "that smashing that shop window was, I confess, a
useless and rather irregular business. It may be excused,
however, as a mere preliminary to further proceedings, a sort of
preface. Wherever and whenever I meet that man," and he pointed
to the editor of _The Atheist_, "whether it be outside this door
in ten minutes from now, or twenty years hence in some distant
country, wherever and whenever I meet that man, I will fight him.
Do not be afraid. I will not rush at him like a bully, or bear
him down with any brute superiority. I will fight him like a
gentleman; I will fight him as our fathers fought. He shall