After the committee broke up, Fergus Macdermott from Belfast, who was not on one of the sub-committees, walked briskly away from the Secretariat, and had tea in company with the young man who represented the Morning Post, and who was an old school-fellow of his. Excited by his own utterances on the subject of Catholics, Fergus Macdermott suddenly remembered, while drinking his tea, what day it was.

“My God,” he remarked, profoundly moved, to Mr. Garth of the Morning Post, “it's the 8th of September.”

“What then?” inquired Mr. Garth, who was an Englishman and knew not days, except those on which university matches were to be played or races run or armistices celebrated. “What's the 8th?”

The blue eyes of Mr. Macdermott gazed at him with a kind of kindling Orange stare.

“The 8th,” he replied, “is a day we keep in Ulster.”

“Do you? How?”

“By throwing stones,” said Mr. Macdermott, simply and fervently. “At processions, you know. It's a great Catholic day—like August 15th—I forget why. Some Catholic foolery. The birthday of the Virgin Mary, I fancy. Anyhow we throw stones.... I wonder will there be any processions here?”

“You can't throw stones if there are,” his more discreet friend admonished him. “Pull yourself together, Fergus, and don't look so fell. These things simply aren't done outside your maniac country, you know. Remember where and what you are.”

The wild blue fire still leapt in Mr. Macdermott's Celtic eyes. His mind obviously still hovered round processions.

“Of course,” he explained, “one couldn't throw stones. Not abroad. But one might go and look on....”

“Certainly not. Not if I can prevent you. You'll disgrace the League by shouting: ‘To hell with the Pope.’ I know you. If a procession is anywhere in the offing, it will make you feel so at home that you'll lose your head entirely. Go and find O'Shane and punch his head if you want to let off steam. He'll be game, particularly as it's one of his home festivals too. You're neither of you safe to have loose on the Nativity of the B.V.M., if that's what it is.”

Macdermott gazed at the lake with eyes that dreamed of home.

“It'd be a queer thing,” he murmured, “if there wouldn't be a procession somewhere to-day, even in this godly Protestant city....”

“Well, in case there should, and to keep you safe, you'd better come and dine with me at eight at my inn. Don't dress. I must go and send off my stuff now. See you later, then.”

Fergus Macdermott, left alone, strolled along towards his own hotel, but when he was half-way to it a clashing of bells struck on his ear, and reminded him that the Catholic Church of Notre Dame was only a few streets away. No harm to walk that way, and see if anything was doing. He did so. On the door of the church a notice announced that the procession in honour of the Nativity of Our Lady would leave the church at eight o'clock and pursue a route, which was given in detail.

“Well, I can't see it,” said Fergus Macdermott. “I shall be having dinner.” He went back to his hotel and typed out a manifesto, or petition, as he called it, for presentation to the Assembly when quieter times should supervene and make the consideration of general problems possible again. The manifesto was on the subject of the tyranny exercised over Ulster by the Southern Free State Government. At the same moment, in his room at the same hotel, Denis O'Shane, the Free State delegate, was typing his manifesto, which was about the tyranny exercised over South Ireland by Ulster.

At 7.45 Macdermott finished his document, read it through with satisfaction and remembered that he had to go and dine with Garth. He left his hotel with this intention, and could not have said at what point his more profound, his indeed innate intention, which was to go to the Church of Notre Dame, asserted itself. Anyhow, at eight o'clock, there he was in the Place Cornavin, arriving at the outskirts of the crowd which was watching the white-robed crucifer and acolytes leading the procession out of the open church doors and down the steps.

Macdermott, blocked by the crowd, could hardly see. He felt in an inferior position towards this procession, barred from it by a kindly and reverent crowd of onlookers. In his native city things were different. He had here no moral support for his just contempt of Popish flummery. He did not want to do anything to the procession, merely to stare it down with the disgust it deserved, but this was difficult when he could only see it above bared heads.

A voice just above him said, in French: “Monsieur cannot see. He would get a better view from this window here. I beg of you to come in, monsieur.”

Looking up, Macdermott saw the face of a kindly old woman looking down at him from the first-floor window of the high house behind him. Certainly, he admitted, he could not see, and he would rather like to. He entered the hospitable open door, which led into a shop, and ascended a flight of stone steps.

On the top step, in the darkness of a narrow passage, a chloroformed towel was flung and held tight over his head and face, and he was borne to the ground.

---