“I have been startled by it myself,” said Ransom. “But after all we had no right to expect that his penal code would be that of the nineteenth century. I find it difficult, too, to make him understand that I am not an absolute monarch.”

“Is-is he a Christian?” asked Dimble.

“Yes,” said Ransom. “As for my clothes, I have for once put on the dress of my office to do him honour, and because I was ashamed. He mistook MacPhee and me for scullions or stable-boys. In his days, you see, men did not, except for necessity, go about in shapeless sacks of cloth, and drab was not a favourite colour.”

At this point Merlin spoke again. Dimble and the Director, who alone could follow his speech, heard him say, “Who are these people? If they are your slaves, why do they do you no reverence? If they are enemies, why do we not destroy them?”

“They are my friends,” began Ransom in Latin, but MacPhee interrupted.

“Do I understand, Dr. Ransom,” he said, “that you are asking us to accept this person as a member of our organisation?”

“I am afraid,” said the Director, “I cannot put it that way. He is a member of the organisation. And I must command you all to accept him.”

“And secondly,” continued MacPhee, “I must ask what enquiries have been made into his credentials.”

“I am fully satisfied,” answered the Director. “I am as sure of his good faith as of yours.”

“But the grounds of your confidence?” persisted MacPhee. “Are we not to hear them?”

“It would be hard,” said the Director, “to explain to you my reasons for trusting Merlinus Ambrosius: but no harder than to explain to him why, despite many appearances which might be misunderstood, I trust you.” There was just the ghost of a smile about his mouth as he said this. Then Merlin spoke to him again in Latin and he replied. After that Merlin addressed Dimble.

“The Pendragon tells me,” he said in his unmoved voice, “that you accuse me for a fierce and cruel man. It is a charge I never heard before. A third part of my substance I gave to widows and poor men. I never sought the death of any but felons and heathen Saxons. As for the woman, she may live for me. I am not master in this house. But would it be such a great matter if her head were struck off? Do not queens and ladies who would disdain her as their tire-woman go to the fire for less? Even that gallows bird (cruciarius) beside you-I mean you, fellow, though you speak nothing but your own barbarous tongue; you with the face like sour milk and the voice like a saw in a hard log and the legs like a crane’s-even that cutpurse (sector zonarius), though I would have him to the gatehouse, yet the rope should be used on his back, not his throat.”

MacPhee who realised, though without understanding the words, that he was the subject of some unfavourable comment, stood listening with that expression of entirely suspended judgement which is commoner in Northern Ireland and the Scotch lowlands than in England.

“Mr. Director “he said, when Merlin had finished, “I would be very greatly obliged if--”

“Come,” said the Director suddenly, “we have none of us slept to-night. Arthur, will you come and light a fire for our guest in the big room at the north end of this passage? And would someone wake the women. Ask them to bring him up refreshments. A bottle of Burgundy and whatever you have cold. And then, all to bed. We need not stir early in the morning. All is going to be very well.”

IV

“We’re going to have difficulties with that new colleague of ours,” said Dimble. He was alone with his wife in their room at St. Anne’s late on the following day.

“Yes,” he repeated after a pause. “What you’d call a strong colleague.”

“You look very tired, Cecil, said Mrs. Dimble.

“Well, it’s been rather a gruelling conference,” said he.

“He’s-he’s a tiring man. Oh, I know we’ve all been fools. I mean, we’ve all been imagining that because he came back in the twentieth century he’d be a twentieth-century man. Time is more important than we thought, that’s all.”

“I felt that at lunch, you know,” said his wife, “it was so silly not to have realised that he wouldn’t know about forks. But what surprised me even more (after the first shock) was how-well, how elegant he was without them. I mean you could see it wasn’t a case of having no manners but of having different ones.”

“Oh the old boy’s a gentleman in his own way, anyone can see that. But . . . well, I don’t know. I suppose it’s all right.”

“What happened at the meeting?”

“Well, you see, everything had to be explained on both sides. We’d the dickens of a job to make him understand that Ransom isn’t the king of this country or trying to become king. And then we had to break it to him that we weren’t the British at all, but the English-what he’d call Saxons. It took him some time to get over that.”

“I see.”

“And then MacPhee had to choose that moment for embarking on an interminable explanation of the relations between Scotland and Ireland and England. All of which, of course, had to be translated. It was all nonsense, too. Like a good many people MacPhee imagines he’s a Celt when, apart from his name, there’s nothing Celtic about him any more than about Mr. Bultitude. By the way Merlinus Ambrosius made a prophecy about Mr. Bultitude.”

“Oh ! What was that?”

“He said that before Christmas this bear would do the best deed that any bear had done in Britain except some other bear that none of us had ever heard of. He keeps on saying things like that. They just pop out when we’re talking about something else, and in a rather different voice. As if he couldn’t help it. He doesn’t seem to know any more than the bit he tells you at the moment, if you see what I mean. As if something like a camera shutter opened at the back of his mind and closed again immediately and just one little item came through. It has rather a disagreeable effect.”

“He and MacPhee didn’t quarrel again, I hope.”

“Not exactly. I’m afraid Merlinus Ambrosius wasn’t taking MacPhee very seriously. From the fact that MacPhee is always being obstructive and rather rude and yet never gets sat on, I think Merlinus has concluded that he is the Director’s fool. He seems to have got over his dislike for him. But I don’t think MacPhee is going to like Merlinus.”

“Did you get down to actual business?” asked Mrs. Dimble.

“Well, in a way,” said Dimble, wrinkling his forehead.

“We were all at cross purposes, you see. The business about Ivy’s husband being in prison came up, and Merlinus wanted to know why we hadn’t rescued him. He seemed to imagine us just riding off and taking the County Jail by storm. That’s the sort of thing one was up against all the time.”

“Cecil,” said Mrs. Dimble suddenly. “Is he going to be any use?”

“He’s going to be able to do things, if that’s what you mean. In that sense there’s more danger of his being too much use than too little.”

“What sort of things?” asked his wife.

“The universe is so very complicated,” said Dr. Dimble.

“So you have said rather often before, dear,” replied Mrs. Dimble.

“Have I?” he said with a smile. “How often, I wonder? As often as you’ve told the story of the pony and trap at Dawlish?”

“Cecil! I haven’t told it for years.”

“My dear, I heard you telling it to Camilla the night before last.”

“Oh, Camilla! That was quite different. She’d never heard it before.”

“I don’t know that we can be certain even about that . . . the universe being so complicated and all.”

For a few minutes there was silence between them.

“But about Merlin?” asked Mrs. Dimble presently.

“Have you ever noticed,” said Dimble, “that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?”