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"Lord! How d'you expectto assimilate the situation

"He's in a devil of a mess," he said, with abrupt cheerfulness "That erous of the lot Just because he's honest"

"Good God!" broke in the other again suddenly "Do all Catholics believe this rubbish?"

"My dear friend, of course they don't Not one in a thousand I wish they did That's what's the h at it!" His voice cracked into shrill falsetto "Laugh at hell-fire Is Sunday the day, did you say?"

"He told me the twenty-fifth"

"And at that woman's in Queen's Gate, I suppose?"

"Expect so He didn't say Or I forget"

"I heard they were at their gaeniality "I'd like to blow up the stinking hole"

Mr Morton chuckled audibly

"You're the youngest man of your years I've ever come across," he said "No wonder you believe all that stuff When are you going to grow up, Cathcart?"

The old man paid no attention at all

"Well--that plot's over," he said again "Now for Miss Deronnais But we can't stop this Sunday affair; that's certain Did he tell you anything about it? Materialization? Autoon"

"My dear Morton, for a lawyer, you're the worst witness I've ever--Well, I'm off No more to be done today"

The other sat on a fewthat a sensible man like Cathcart could take such rubbish seriously In every other department of life the solicitor was an eminently shrewd and sane man, with, moreover, a youthful kind of brisk humor that is perhaps the surest symptom of sanity that it is possible to have

He had seen him in court for years past under every sort of circumstance, and if it had been required of him to select a character hich superstition andin common, he would have laid his hand upon the senior partner of Cathcart and Cathcart Yet here was this sanethis fantastic nonsense as if there were really so in it He had first heard him speak of the subject at a small bachelor dinner party of four in the rooms of a mutual friend; and, as he had listened, he had had the sa a Cabinet Minister, let us say, discussing stump-cricket with enthusiasm