Page:The Ball and the Cross.djvu/322

pausing and saying: “I can’t leave MacIan behind in this den.”

“We are going to destroy the Pope and all the kings,” said the new-comer. “Would it be wiser to take him with us?”

Somehow the muttering Turnbull found himself in the flying ship also, and it swung up into the sunset.

“All the great rebels have been very little rebels,” said the man with the red scarf. “They have been like fourth-form boys who sometimes venture to hit a fifth-form boy. That was all the worth of their French Revolution and regicide. The boys never really dared to defy the schoolmaster.”

“Whom do you mean by the schoolmaster?” asked Turnbull.

“You know whom I mean,” answered the strange man, as he lay back on cushions and looked up into the angry sky.

They seemed rising into stronger and stronger sunlight, as if it were sunrise rather than sunset But when they looked down at the earth they saw it growing darker and darker. The lunatic asylum in its large rectangular grounds spread below them in a foreshortened and infantile plan,