did he say? Temper of his men excellent, I suppose?"

"Used that one word." "Um-m-m! No suspicions, eh?" "Said, 'No, no
suspicions!'" "Uh! I'll have a word with him." He waddled off,
shaking his drab silk suit into shape and twisting a leather
watch-guard around his finger.

"Believe it will come to anything?" asked one of the two men he had
left behind.

"Dunno. Hope not. Awful business if it does."

"Remember how we were promised a world-war two years ago, just
before the Balkans took fire?"

"Yes. That was a near thing, too. But they weren't quite ready then.
Now they are ready, and they think we're not. If I were asked, I'd
say we ought to let them know we're ready for 'em. They want to fight
because they think they can catch us napping; they'd think twice if
they knew they couldn't do it."

"Are they blind and deaf? Can't they see and hear?"

"_Quern deus vult perdere, prius dementat_, Ponsonby, my boy."

The man in drab silk slipped into a chair next to Kirby's as a wolf
slips into his lair, very circumspectly, and without noise; then he
rutched the chair sidewise toward Kirby with about as much noise as a
company of infantry would make.