to discuss the news which had
come that day from the chiefs of the Revolutionaries in Warsaw, the
discussion had been diverted, as such discussions invariably are, to a
recital of personal wrongs and of individual resolutions--even to mad
talk of the conquest of the world and the crowning of King Anarchy. And
to this the wild Asiatics and the sad-faced Poles listened alike with
rare murmurs and odd contortions of limbs and body. Let Paul Boriskoff
of Minsk be the orator and they knew that the red flag would fly. But
never before has Boriskoff been seen in tears and the spectacle
enchained their attention as no mere rhetoric could have done.

A man's confession, if it be honest, must ever be a profoundly
interesting document. Boriskoff, the Pole, did not hold these people
spellbound by the vigor of his denunciation or the rhythmic chant of his
anger. He had begun in a quiet voice, welcoming the news from Warsaw and
the account of the assassination of the Deputy Governor Lebinsky. From
that he passed to the old question, why does authority remain in any
city at all? This London that sleeps so securely, does it ever awake to
remember the unnumbered hosts which pitch their tents in the courts and
alleys of Whitechapel? "Put rifles into the hands of a hundred thousand
men who can be found to-night," he had said, "and where is your British
Government to-morrow? The police--they would be but as dead leaves under
the feet of a mighty multitude. The soldiers! Friends," he put it to
them, "do you ever ask yourselves how many soldiers there are in the
barracks of London to-night and what would happen to them if the people
were armed? I say to you that the house would fall as a house of cards;
the rich would flee; the poor would reign. And you who know this for a
truth, what do you answer to me? That London harbors you, that London
feeds you--aye, with the food of swine in the kennels of the dogs."

Men nodded their heads to this and some of the women tittered behind
their ragged shawls. They had heard it all so often--the grand assault
by numbers; the rifle shots ringing out in the sleeping streets by
Piccadilly; the sack of Park Lane; the flight of the Government; the
downfall of what is and the establishment of what might be. If they
believed it possible, they had sense enough to remember that a sacked
city of amnesty would be the poorest tribute to their own sagacity. At
least London did not flog them. Their wives and sisters w