“So that if he fulfilled them both he’d have to break them both—­”

“Stop a sec!  Gad, I’ve lost it!  Start again, Hen!”

“No, I mean so that if he didn’t break one he would be forced to break the other.  Have you got that?”

“Stop a bit!  Don’t believe I have.  Let’s see!”

He moved his lips silently, repeating the Prophet’s words.

“Yes.  I’ve got that all right now,” he said, after three minutes of strenuous mental exertion.

“Well, what would you say of him?”

“That he was a damned fool.”

The Prophet looked very much upset.

“No, no, Bob, I meant to him.  What would you say to him?”

“That he was a damned fool.”

The Prophet began to appear thoroughly broken down.  However, he still stuck to his interpellation.

“Very well, Bob,” he said, with unutterable resignation—­as of a toad beneath the harrow—­“but, putting all that aside—­”

“Give us a chance, Hen!  I’ve got to shunt all that, have I?”

“Yes, at least all you would say of, and to, the man.”

“Oh, only that.  Wait a bit!  Yes, I’ve done that.  Drive on now!”

“Putting all that aside, what should you advise the man to do?”

“Not to be such a damned fool again.”

“No, no!  I mean about the two promises?”

“What about ’em?”

“Which would his sense of honour compel him to keep?”

“I shouldn’t think such a damned fool’d got a sense of honour.”

The Prophet winced, but he stuck with feverish obstinacy to his point.

“Yes, Bob, he had.”

“I don’t believe it, Hen, ’pon my word I don’t.  You’ll always find that damned f—­”

“Bob, I must beg you to take it from me.  He had.  Now which promise should he keep?”

“Who’d he made ’em to?”

“Who?” said the Prophet, wavering.

“Yes.”

“One to—­to a very near and dear relative, the other to—­well, Bob to two comparative strangers.”

“What sort of strangers.”

“The sort of strangers who—­who live beside a river, and who—­who mix principally with—­well, in fact, with architects and their wives.”

“Rum sort of strangers?”

“They are decidedly.”

“Oh, then, you know ’em?”

“That’s not the point,” exclaimed the Prophet, hastily.  “The point is which promise is to be kept.”

“I should say the one made to the relative.  Wait a bit, though!  Yes, I should say that.”

The Prophet breathed a sigh of relief.  But some dreadful sense of honesty within him compelled him to add,—­

“I forgot to say that he’d pledged his honour to the architects—­that is, to the strangers who lived beside a river.”

“What—­and not pledged it to the relative?”

“Well, no.”

“Then he ought to stick to the promise he’d pledged his honour over, of course.  Nice for the relative!  The man’s a damned fool, Hen.  Do have a drink, old chap.”