Then Mr. Turnbull rose slowly from the bench below the gangway.  With a speaker so frequent and so famous as Mr. Turnbull no hurry is necessary.  He is sure to have his opportunity.  The Speaker’s eye is ever travelling to the accustomed spots.  Mr. Turnbull rose slowly and began his oration very mildly.  “There was nothing,” he said, “that he admired so much as the poetic imagery and the high-flown sentiment of his right honourable friend the member for West Bromwich,”—­Mr. Monk sat for West Bromwich,—­“unless it were the stubborn facts and unanswered arguments of his honourable friend who had brought forward this motion.”  Then Mr. Turnbull proceeded after his fashion to crush Mr. Monk.  He was very prosaic, very clear both in voice and language, very harsh, and very unscrupulous.  He and Mr. Monk had been joined together in politics for over twenty years;—­but one would have thought, from Mr. Turnbull’s words, that they had been the bitterest of enemies.  Mr. Monk was taunted with his office, taunted with his desertion of the liberal party, taunted with his ambition,—­and taunted with his lack of ambition.  “I once thought,” said Mr. Turnbull,—­“nay, not long ago I thought, that he and I would have fought this battle for the people, shoulder to shoulder, and knee to knee;—­but he has preferred that the knee next to his own shall wear a garter, and that the shoulder which supports him shall be decked with a blue ribbon,—­as shoulders, I presume, are decked in those closet conferences which are called Cabinets.”

Just after this, while Mr. Turnbull was still going on with a variety of illustrations drawn from the United States, Barrington Erle stepped across the benches up to the place where Phineas was sitting, and whispered a few words into his ear.  “Bonteen is prepared to answer Turnbull, and wishes to do it.  I told him that I thought you should have the opportunity, if you wish it.”  Phineas was not ready with a reply to Erle at the spur of the moment.  “Somebody told me,” continued Erle, “that you had said that you would like to speak to-night.”

“So I did,” said Phineas.

“Shall I tell Bonteen that you will do it?”

The chamber seemed to swim round before our hero’s eyes.  Mr. Turnbull was still going on with his clear, loud, unpleasant voice, but there was no knowing how long he might go on.  Upon Phineas, if he should now consent, might devolve the duty, within ten minutes, within three minutes, of rising there before a full House to defend his great friend, Mr. Monk, from a gross personal attack.  Was it fit that such a novice as he should undertake such a work as that?  Were he to do so, all that speech which he had prepared, with its various self-floating parts, must go for nothing.  The task was exactly that which, of all tasks, he would best like to have accomplished, and to have accomplished well.  But if he should fail!  And he felt that he would fail.  For such work a man should have all his senses about him,—­his