between the vote-mongers and the so-called ‘scare-mongers,’ and their verdict was for the vote-mongers all the time.  And now they are bitter; they are being punished, and punishment is not a thing that they have been schooled to bear.  The taxes that are falling on them are a grievous source of discontent, and the military service that will be imposed on them, for the first time in their lives, will be another.  There is a more lovable side to their character under misfortune, though,” added the young clergyman.  “Deep down in their hearts there was a very real affection for the old dynasty.  Future historians will perhaps be able to explain how and why the Royal Family of Great Britain captured the imaginations of its subjects in so genuine and lasting a fashion.  Among the poorest and the most matter-of-fact, for whom the name of no public man, politician or philanthropist, stands out with any especial significance, the old Queen, and the dead King, the dethroned monarch and the young prince live in a sort of domestic Pantheon, a recollection that is a proud and wistful personal possession when so little remains to be proud of or to possess.  There is no favour that I am so often asked for among my poorer parishioners as the gift of the picture of this or that member of the old dynasty.  ’I have got all of them, only except Princess Mary,’ an old woman said to me last week, and she nearly cried with pleasure when I brought her an old Bystander portrait that filled the gap in her collection.  And on Queen Alexandra’s day they bring out and wear the faded wild-rose favours that they bought with their pennies in days gone by.”

“The tragedy of the enactment that is about to enforce military service on these people is that it comes when they’ve no longer a country to fight for,” said Yeovil.

The young clergyman gave an exclamation of bitter impatience.

“That is the cruel mockery of the whole thing.  Every now and then in the course of my work I have come across lads who were really drifting to the bad through the good qualities in them.  A clean combative strain in their blood, and a natural turn for adventure, made the ordinary anaemic routine of shop or warehouse or factory almost unbearable for them.  What splendid little soldiers they would have made, and how grandly the discipline of a military training would have steadied them in after-life when steadiness was wanted.  The only adventure that their surroundings offered them has been the adventure of practising mildly criminal misdeeds without getting landed in reformatories and prisons; those of them that have not been successful in keeping clear of detection are walking round and round prison yards, experiencing the operation of a discipline that breaks and does not build.  They were merry-hearted boys once, with nothing of the criminal or ne’er-do-weel in their natures, and now—­have you ever seen a prison yard, with that walk round and round and round between grey walls under a blue sky?”