He was in a state of flurry all day, thinking of his unpleasant duty towards those violent persons, and garbishing up his memory by reading such past leaders in his five journals as bore on the subject.  He spoke no word of his intentions, convinced that he ran a considerable risk at the hands of the Pacifists, but too sensible of his honour to assist anyone to put that spoke in his wheel which he could not help longing for.

At six o’clock he locked Blink into his study, and arming himself with three leaders, set forth on his perilous adventure.  Seven o’clock saw him hurrying along the dismal road to the chapel, at whose door he met with an unexpected check.

“Where is your ticket?” said a large man.

“I have none,” replied Mr. Lavender, disconcerted; “for this is a meeting of the Free Speakers’ League, and it is for that reason that I have come.”

The large man looked at him attentively.  “No admittance without ticket,” he said.

“I protest,” said Mr. Lavender.  “How can you call yourselves by that name and not let me in?”

The large man smiled.

“Well, he said, you haven’t the strength of—­of a rabbit—­in you go!”

Mr. Lavender found himself inside and some indignation.

The meeting had begun, and a tall man at the pulpit end, with the face of a sorrowful bull, was addressing an audience composed almost entirely of women and old men, while his confederates sat behind him trying to look as if they were not present.  At the end of a row, about half-way up the chapel, Mr. Lavender composed himself to listen, thinking, “However eager I may be to fulfil my duty and break up this meeting, it behoves me as a fair-minded man to ascertain first what manner of meeting it is that I am breaking up.”  But as the speaker progressed, in periods punctuated by applause from what, by his experience at the door, Mr. Lavender knew to be a packed audience, he grew more and more uneasy.  It cannot be said that he took in what the speaker was saying, obsessed as he was by the necessity of formulating a reply, and of revolving, to the exclusion of all else, the flowers and phrases of the leaders which during the day he had almost learned by heart.  But by nature polite he waited till the orator was sitting down before he rose, and, with the three leaders firmly grasped in his hand, walked deliberately up to the seated speakers.  Turning his back on them, he said, in a voice to which nervousness and emotion lent shrillness: 

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is now your turn, in accordance with the tradition of your society, to listen to me.  Let us not mince matters with mealy mouths.  There are in our midst certain viperous persons, like that notorious gentleman who had the sulphurous impudence to have a French father—­French! gentlemen; not German, ladies-mark the cunning and audacity of the fellow; like that renegade Labour leader, who has never led anything, yet, if he had his will,