“A man died yesterday in Ealing.  You murdered him.  A girl had the toothache in Croydon.  You gave it her.  Fifty sailors were drowned off Selsey Bill.  You scuttled their ship.  What have you got to say for yourself, eh?”

The representative of omnipotence looked as if he had left most of these things to his subordinates; he passed a hand over his wrinkling brow and said in a voice much saner than any he had yet used: 

“Well, if you dislike my assistance, of course—­perhaps the other gentleman——­”

“The other gentleman,” cried Turnbull, scornfully, “is a submissive and loyal and obedient gentleman.  He likes the people who wear crowns, whether of diamonds or of stars.  He believes in the divine right of kings, and it is appropriate enough that he should have the king for his second.  But it is not appropriate to me that I should have God for my second.  God is not good enough.  I dislike and I deny the divine right of kings.  But I dislike more and I deny more the divine right of divinity.”

Then after a pause in which he swallowed his passion, he said to MacIan:  “You have got the right second, anyhow.”

The Highlander did not answer, but stood as if thunderstruck with one long and heavy thought.  Then at last he turned abruptly to his second in the silk hat and said:  “Who are you?”

The man in the silk hat blinked and bridled in affected surprise, like one who was in truth accustomed to be doubted.

“I am King Edward VII,” he said, with shaky arrogance.  “Do you doubt my word?”

“I do not doubt it in the least,” answered MacIan.

“Then, why,” said the large man in the silk hat, trembling from head to foot, “why do you wear your hat before the king?”

“Why should I take it off,” retorted MacIan, with equal heat, “before a usurper?”

Turnbull swung round on his heel.  “Well, really,” he said, “I thought at least you were a loyal subject.”

“I am the only loyal subject,” answered the Gael.  “For nearly thirty years I have walked these islands and have not found another.”

“You are always hard to follow,” remarked Turnbull, genially, “and sometimes so much so as to be hardly worth following.”

“I alone am loyal,” insisted MacIan; “for I alone am in rebellion.  I am ready at any instant to restore the Stuarts.  I am ready at any instant to defy the Hanoverian brood—­and I defy it now even when face to face with the actual ruler of the enormous British Empire!”

And folding his arms and throwing back his lean, hawklike face, he haughtily confronted the man with the formal frock-coat and the eccentric elbow.