“Can I speak a word with you, Mr. Maraton?”

Maraton nodded.

“Of course.  I don’t remember your name.  You were at Manchester, weren’t you, and at my house with the others?”

“Ross, my name is,” the man answered.  “I’d no call to be at Manchester, for I’m not one of the delegates.  I’m not an M.P. but I’ve done a lot of speaking for them lately, and Peter Dale, he said if I paid my own expenses I could come along.  I borrowed the money.  I had to come.  I had to hear you speak.  I wanted to know your message.”

“Were you satisfied with it?” Maraton enquired.

“I don’t know,” was the doubtful reply.  “You ask me a question I can’t answer myself.  I thought so at the time, but since then I’ve spent many sleepless nights and many tired hours, asking myself that question.  Now I am here to ask you one.  Did you speak that night what you had in your mind when you left America?—­what you thought of on the steamer coming over—­what you meant to say when first you set foot in this country?”

Maraton was interested.  He walked slowly along by the side of his companion.

“I did not,” he admitted.  “I came with other views.

“I knew it!” Ross exclaimed, almost fiercely.  “I felt it, man.  You came to preach redemption, even though the means were sharp and short and sudden, means of blood, means of death.  Before you ever came here, I seemed to hear your voice crying across that great continent, crying even across the ocean.  It was a terrible cry, but it seemed as though it must reach up into heaven and down into hell, for it was aflame with truth.  It seemed to me that I could see the revolution upon us, the death that is like sleep, the looking down once more from some undiscovered place upon the new morning.  You never uttered that cry over here.”

Maraton glanced at his companion curiously.

“Mine was an immense responsibility,” he said.  “Granted that I had the power, do you think that I had the right to stir up a civil war here in the face of the help I was promised for our people?”

David Ross sighed.

“I don’t know,” he confessed.  “I only know that many years ago, Peter Dale, when he was a young man, spoke as though the word of truth were burning in his heart.  He was for a revolution.  He would be content with nothing less.  And Borden was like that, and Graveling, and others whom you don’t know.  And then the people gave them their mandate, knocked a bit of money together, and sent them to Parliament.  There, somehow or other, they seemed to fall into the easier ways.  They worked stolidly and honestly, no doubt, but something had gone, something we’ve all missed, something that by this time might have helped.  When they told me—­it was Aaron who came and told me—­rode his bicycle like a madman, all the way from Soho.  ‘Maraton is come!’ he shouted.  Then it seemed to me that freedom was here; no more compromises, but battle—­the naked sword, battle with the wrongs of generations to requite.  Is the sword sheathed?”