Then we met a party of volunteers. They stopped us too, and challenged us very sternly. Bland gave his answer. This time it did not prove wholly satisfactory.
"Protestant or Papist?" said the officer in command.
"Neither," said Bland, "I'm a high caste Brahmin."
Fortunately I recognized the officer's voice. It was Crossan who commanded this particular regiment. It never was safe, even in the quietest times, to be flippant with Crossan. On a night like that and under the existing circumstances, Bland might very well have been knocked on the head for his joke if I had not come to his rescue.
"Crossan," I said, "don't make a fuss. Mr. Bland and I are simply taking a walk round the streets."
"If he's a Papist," said Crossan, "he'll have to go home to his bed. Them's my orders. We don't want rioting in the streets to-night."
"Haven't any," he said. "I haven't believed any doctrine taught by any Church since I was six years old. Will that satisfy you?"
"I was afeard," said Crossan, "that you might be a Papist. You can go on."
This shows, I think, that the charges of bigotry and intolerance brought against our Northern Protestants are quite unfounded. Crossan had no wish to persecute even a professed atheist.
We did not go very far though we were out for nearly two hours. The streets were filled with armed men and everybody we met challenged us. The police were the hardest to get rid of. They were no doubt soured by the treatment they received in Belfast. Accustomed to be regarded with awe by rural malefactors and denounced in flaming periods, of a kind highly gratifying to their self-importance, by political leaders, they could not understand a people who did not mention them in speeches but threatened their lives with paving stones. This had been their previous experience of Belfast and they were naturally suspicious of any stray wayfarers whom they met. They were not impressed when Bland said he was a newspaper reporter. They did not seem to care whether he believed or disbelieved the Apostles' Creed. One party of them actually arrested us and only a ready lie of Bland's saved us from spending an uncomfortable night. He said, to my absolute amazement, that we were officials of an exalted kind, sent down by the Local Government Board to hold a sworn inquiry into the condition of Belfast. This struck me at the time as an outrageously silly story, but it was really a rather good one to tell. The Irish police are accustomed to sworn inquiries as one of the last resorts of harassed Governments. It seemed to the sergeant quite natural that somebody should be in Belfast to hold one.