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head."
         "I saw them killing a man . . .a man in a big car driving along a country road. Then he came to a crossroads and there was someone standing in the middle of the road waving a light to stop him. I couldn't hear what they said; I was too far away. They must have persuaded him to get out of the car somehow, and there he was talking to one of them. The light fell full on his face. He wasn't the same old man I saw in my other dream. He hadn't a beard, only a moustache. And he had a very quick, kind of proud, way. He didn't like what the man said to him and presently he put up his fists and knocked him down. Another man behind him tried to hit him on the head with something, but the old man was too quick and turned round in time. Then it was rather horrible, but rather fine. There were three of them at him and he was fighting them all. I've read about that kind of thing in books, but I never realised how one would feel about it. Of course they got him in the end."
         "Without a doubt," thought Mark, "this must be the Mad Parson that Bill the Blizzard was talking of." The committee at Belbury did not meet till 10.30, and ever since breakfast he had been walking with the Reverend Straik in the garden, despite the raw and misty weather of the morning. At the very moment when the man had first buttonholed him, the threadbare clothes and clumsy boots, the frayed clerical collar, the dark, lean, tragic face, gashed and ill-shaved and seamed, and the bitter sincerity of his manner, had struck a discordant note. It was not a type Mark had expected to meet in the N.I.C.E.
         "Do not imagine," said Mr. Straik, "that I indulge in any dreams of carrying out our programme without violence. There will be resistance. They will gnaw their tongues and not repent. We face these disorders with a firmness which will lead traducers to say that we have desired them. In a sense we have. It is no part of our witness to preserve that organisation of ordered sin which is called Society."
         "Now that is what I meant," said Mark, " when I said that your point of view and mine must, in the long run, be incompatible. The preservation, which involves the thorough planning, of society is just precisely the end I have in view. I do not think there is or can be any other end. The problem is quite different for you because you look forward to something better than human society, in some other world."
         "With every thought and vibration of my heart," said Mr. Straik, "I repudiate that damnable doctrine. The Kingdom of God is to be realised here-in this world. And it will be. At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.
         "Bother!" said Jane: and added, without much interest in the reply, "What is she doing, do you know?"
         "She's gone out to St. Anne's."
         "Has she got friends there?"
         "She's gone to the Manor, along with Cecil."
         "Do you mean she's got a job there?"
         "Well, yes. I suppose it is a job."
         Mrs. Dimble left at about eleven. She also, it appeared, was going to St. Anne's, but was first to meet her husband and lunch with him at Northumberland. Jane walked down to the town with her and they parted at the bottom of Market Street. It was just after this that Jane met Mr. Curry.
         "Have you heard the news, Mrs. Studdock?" said Curry.
         "No. What's wrong?" said Jane. She thought Mr. Curry a pompous fool and Mark a fool for being impressed by him. But as soon as Curry began speaking her face showed all the wonder and consternation he could have wished. The murder of Hingest had already become Curry's property. The "matter" was, in some indefinable sense, "in his hands", and he was heavy with responsibility. At another time Jane would have found this amusing. She escaped from him as soon as possible and went into Blackie's for a cup of coffee. She felt she must sit down.
         The death of Hingest in itself meant nothing to her. But the