“Well,” I said, deciding to cheer up, “you see, I have only been playing the part of Providence.  Let me play it just a few days longer, until this mob of crazy soldier-boys has got out of town again.  I am truly ashamed for them, but I am one of them myself, so I understand them.  They really fought and won a war, you see, and they are full of the madness of it, the blind, intense passions—­”

Carpenter was on his feet.  “I know!” he exclaimed.  “I know!  You need not tell me about that!  I do not blame your soldier-boys.  I blame the men who incite them—­the old men, the soft-handed men, who sit back in office-chairs and plan madness for the world!  What shall be the punishment of these men?”

“They’re a hard crowd—­” I admitted.

“I have seen them!  They are stone-faced men!  They are wolves with machinery!  They are savages with polished fingernails!  And they have made of the land a place of fools!  They have made it Mobland!”

I did not try to answer him, but waited until the storm of his emotion passed.  “You are right, Mr. Carpenter.  But that is the fact about our world, and you cannot change it—­”

Carpenter flung out his arm at me.  “Let no man utter in my presence the supreme blasphemy against life!”

So, of course, I was silent; and Carpenter went and sat at the window again, and watched the dawn.

At last I ventured:  “All that your friends ask, Mr. Carpenter, is that you will wait until this convention of the ex-soldiers has got out of town.  After that, it may be possible to get people to listen to you.  But while the Brigade is here, it is impossible.  They are rough, and they are wild; they are taking possession of the city, and will do what they please.  If they see you on the streets, they will inflict indignities upon you, they will mishandle you—­”

Said Carpenter:  “Do not fear those who kill the body, but fear those who kill the soul.”

So again I fell silent; and presently he remarked:  “My brother, I wish to be alone.”

Said I:  “Won’t you please promise, Mr. Carpenter—­”

He answered:  “I make promises only to my Father.  Let me be.”

LIX

I went downstairs, and there was T-S, wandering around like a big fat monk in a purple dressing gown.  And there was Maw, also—­only her dressing gown was rose-pink, with white chrysanthemums on it.  It took a lot to get those two awake at six o’clock in the morning, you may be sure; but there they were, very much worried.  “Vot does he say?” cried the magnate.

“He won’t say what he is going to do.”

“He von’t promise to stay?”

“He won’t promise anything.”

“Veil, did you lock de door?”

I answered that I had, and then Maw put in, in a hurry:  “Billy, you gotta stay here and take care of him!  If he vas to gome downstairs and tell me to do someting, I vould got to do it!”