A restive movement in the audience followed the speech, which was loudly clapped by Mr. Gresley and the Pratts.

Mr. Gresley then mounted the platform.

Mr. Gresley had an enormous advantage as a platform speaker, and as a preacher in the twin pulpits of church and home, owing to the conviction that he had penetrated to the core of any subject under discussion, and could pronounce judgment upon it in a conclusive manner.  He was wont to approach every subject by the preliminary statement that he had “threshed it out.”  This threshing-out had been so thorough that there was hardly a subject even of the knottiest description which he was unable to dismiss with a few pregnant words.  “Evolution!  Ha! ha!  Descended from an ape.  I don’t believe that for one.”  While women’s rights received their death-blow from a jocose allusion to the woman following the plough while the man sat at home and rocked the cradle.

With the same noble simplicity he grappled with the difficult and complex subject of temperance, by which he meant total abstinence.  He informed his hearers, “in the bigoted tones of a married teetotaler,” that he had gone to the root of the matter—­the roots were apparently on the surface—­and that it was no use calling black white and white black.  He for one did not believe in muddling up black and white, as some lukewarm people advocated, till they were only a dirty gray.  No; either drink was right or it was wrong.  If it was not wrong to get drunk, he did not know what was wrong.  He was not a man of compromise.  Alcohol was a servant of the devil, and to tamper with it was to tamper with the Evil One himself.  Touch not.  Taste not.  Handle not.  He for his part should never side with the devil.

This lofty utterance having been given time to sink in, Mr. Gresley looked round at the sea of stolid, sullen faces, and concluded with saying that the chairman would now call upon his cousin, Mr. Vernon, to speak to them on the shocking evils he himself had witnessed in Australia as the results of drink.

Dick was not troubled by shyness.  He extricated himself from his seat with the help of the young men, and slowly ascended the platform.  He looked a size too large for it, and for the other speakers, and his loose tweed suit and heather stockings were as great a contrast to the tightly buttoned-up black of the other occupants as were his strong, keen face and muscular hands to those of the previous speakers.

“That’s a man,” said a masculine voice behind Rachel.  “He worn’t reared on ditch-water, you bet.”

“Mr. Chairman, and ladies and gentlemen,” said Dick.  “You’ve only got to listen to me for half a minute, and you’ll find out without my telling you that Nature did not cut me out for a speaker.  I’m no talker.  I’m a workingman”—­an admission which Mr. Pratt would rather have been boiled in his own oil than have made.  “For the last seven years I’ve done my twelve hours a day, and I’ve come to think more of what a man gets through with his hands than the sentiments which he can wheeze out after a heavy meal.  But Mr. Gresley has asked me to tell you what I know about drink, as I have seen a good many samples of it in Australia.”