Very different was the scene in the meeting-room behind the coffee-shop.  There, upon Comrade Roodhouse’s harangue, followed a debate more stirring than any on the records of the Islington and Hoxton branch.  The room was thoroughly full; the roof rang with tempestuous acclamations.  Messrs. Cowes and Cullen were in their glory; they roared with delight at each depreciatory epithet applied to Mr. Westlake and his henchmen, and prompted the speakers with words and phrases of a rich vernacular.  If anything, Comrade Roodhouse fell a little short of what was expected of him.  His friends had come together prepared for gory language, but the murderous instigations of Clerkenwell Green were not repeated with the same crudity.  The speaker dealt in negatives; not thus and thus was the social millennium to be brought about, it was open to his hearers to conceive the practical course.  For the rest, the heresiarch had a mighty flow of vituperative speech.  Aspirates troubled him, so that for the most part he cast them away, and the syntax of his periods was often anacoluthic; but these matters were of no moment.

Questions being called for, Mr. Cowes and Mr. Cullen of course started up simultaneously.  The former gentleman got the ear of the meeting.  With preliminary swaying of the hand, he looked round as one about to propound a question which would for ever establish his reputation for acumen.  In his voice of quiet malice, with his frequent deliberate pauses, with the wonted emphasis on absurd pronunciations, he spoke somewhat thus:—­

‘In the course of his address—­I shall say nothin’ about its qualities, the time for discussion will come presently—­our Comrade has said not a few ’ard things about certain individooals who put themselves forward as perractical Socialists—­’

’Not ‘ard enough!’ roared a voice from the back of the room.

Mr. Cowes turned his lank figure deliberately, and gazed for a moment in the quarter whence the interruption had come.  Then he resumed.

’I agree with that involuntary exclamation.  Certainly, not ’ard enough.  And the question I wish to put to our Comrade is this:  Is he, or is he not, aweer of certain scandalous doin’s on the part of one of these said individooals, I might say actions which, from the Socialist point of view, amount to crimes?  If our Comrade is aweer of what I refer to, then it seems to me it was his dooty to distinctly mention it.  If he was not aweer, then we in this neighbourhood shall be only too glad to enlighten him.  I distinctly assert that a certain individooal we all have in our thoughts has proved himself a traitor to the cause of the people.  Comrades will understand me.  And that’s the question I wish to put.’