"I shall come regular now, sir," he said. "I've had my lesson. You can count on me."
Next Sunday indeed he waited grimly and in vain for the prodigal.
"Soon eased off," he muttered, as he closed the door at last. "One with a very sandy soil."
The Manager of the Southdown Transport Company went home that evening to the little house on the Lewes Road in unaccomodating mood.
"_His_ trousers are coming down all right," he told his wife. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Once you let go o God----"
"God lets go o you," interposed Mrs. Pigott. "Tit for tat."
A few days later on his way back to the Manor-house from visiting his little patient in the Moot, the old surgeon met Mr. Pigott, who stopped to make enquiries.
Mr. Trupp looked at the windy sky, torn to shreds and tatters by the Sou-west wind above the tower of the parish-church.
"He wanted the Big Stick and he got it," he said. "If it came down on his shoulders once a week regularly for a year he'd be a man. Steady pressure is what a fellow like that needs. And steady pressure is just what you don't get in a disorganised society such as ours."
The old Nonconformist held up a protesting hand.
"You'd better go to Germany straight off!" he cried. "That's the only place _you'd_ be happy in."
"No need," he said, "Germany's coming here. Ask the Colonel!"
"Ah!" scolded the other. "You and your Colonels! You go and hear Norman Angell on the _Great Illusion_ at the Town Hall on Friday. You go and hear a sensible man talk sense. That'll do you a bit of good. Mr. Geddes is going to take the chair."
The old surgeon turned on his way, grinning still.
"The Colonel's squared Mr. Geddes," he said. "He's all right now."
What Mr. Trupp told Mr. Pigott, more it is true in chaff than in earnest, was partially true at least. Liberalism was giving way beneath the Colonel's calculated assault. After Lord Roberts's visit to Beachbourne the enemy dropped into the lines of the besiegers sometimes in single spies and sometimes in battalions. Only Mr. Pigott held out stubbornly, and that less perhaps from conviction than from a sense of personal grievance against the Colonel. For three solid years the pugnacious old Nonconformist had been trying to fix a quarrel on the man he wished to make his enemy; but his adversary had eluded battle with grace and agility. That in itself happily afforded a good and unforgiveable cause of offence.